How do college students form expectations?

Basit Zafar

No 378, Staff Reports from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: This paper focuses on how college students form expectations about various major-specific outcomes. For this purpose, I collect a panel data set of Northwestern University undergraduates that contains their subjective expectations about major-specific outcomes. Although students tend to be overconfident about their future academic performance, they revised their expectations in expected ways. The updating process is found to be consistent with a Bayesian learning model. I show that learning plays a role in the decision to switch majors, and that major-switchers respond to information from their own major. I also present evidence that learning is general and not entirely major-specific.

Keywords: college majors; expectations; learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 I2 J1 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2009-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-mic
Note: For a published version of this report, see Basit Zafar, "How Do College Students Form Expectations?" Journal of Labor Economics 29, no. 2 (April 2011): 301-48.
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Journal Article: How Do College Students Form Expectations? (2011)
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