Young, Gifted and Lazy? The Role of Ability and Labor Market Prospects in Student Effort Decisions

Adrian Chadi, Marco de Pinto () and Gabriel Schultze ()
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Marco de Pinto: Institute for Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU)
Gabriel Schultze: Institute for Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU)

No 201705, IAAEU Discussion Papers from Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU)

Abstract: This paper examines the decision-making process of students from an economic perspective in order to understand what determines an in- dividual’s willingness to provide effort. Our theoretical model predicts that ability and job market prospects are positive determinants. Ana- lyzing a novel dataset on thousands of German students, however, we instead find that ability has a significantly negative effect on effort. It seems that the marginal gain of increasing effort in terms of higher ex- pected income after studying is lower for high-ability students compared to low-ability students. In regard to the second determinant, the evi- dence rejects a similar argument, according to which great job market prospects may impair student effort. Applying an instrumental vari- able approach based on official unemployment data on regional labor markets, we can confirm our prediction on the positive role of perceived employment prospects in actual student behavior.

Keywords: higher education; effort; study time; leisure; ability; labor market data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 J22 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur and nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Young, gifted and lazy? The role of ability and labor market prospects in student effort decisions (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iaa:dpaper:201705

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