Tastes, Ability or Expected Wages? The Intended Choice of College Majors by Students in Italy

Giorgio Brunello, Francesco Campo, Elisabetta Lodigiani, Martina Miotto and Lorenzo Rocco
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Francesco Campo: University of Padova
Elisabetta Lodigiani: University of Padova
Martina Miotto: University of Padova

No 18444, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: We investigate the factors influencing the intended college major choices of high school students in Italy, ranking the relative importance of expected earnings, perceived ability, and major-specific tastes, that we measure directly using a Coller and Williams game. We find that major-specific tastes and self-assessed ability are significantly more influential in shaping academic intentions than mean expected earnings at age 30. We estimate that a one standard deviation change in the taste for (resp. perceived ability in) a given major increases the odds of choosing that major (relative to Humanities, our benchmark scenario) by 136.4% (resp. 114.1%), far outweighing the 39.3% increase associated with a one standard deviation change in mean expected earnings.

Keywords: major choice; Italy; expectations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lab
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Working Paper: Tastes, ability or expected wages? The intended choice of college majors by students in Italy (2026)
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