Measuring Economic Competence of Secondary School Students in Germany

Tim Kaiser, Luis Oberrauch and Günther Seeber

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: We introduce a test of economic competence for German-speaking secondary school students and provide evidence from a large-scale assessment with 6,230 students from grades seven to ten. The article presents the development and psychometric properties of the scale, as well as an investigation of predictors of economic competence. We find evidence of a gender gap favoring male students, lower scores for students with a migration background, and parents’ socioeconomic background being a predictor of test performance. Additionally, we document sizeable differences between tracks, as well as gains in economic competence across grades in the order of magnitude of 0.06 to 0.2 standard deviations per year. The article concludes with perspectives on an impact evaluation of a curriculum reform introducing mandatory economic education in secondary school.

Keywords: economic competence; economic literacy; item response theory; school economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-fle, nep-gen and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Measuring economic competence of secondary school students in Germany (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:202639

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