market and nonmarket influences on curriculum choice by college students many labor economists and other researchers have attempted to develop models of the workings of the market for college trained manpower this paper reviews this previous research on curriculum choice and then tests an alternative model with data on choices made by male baccalaureates across a wide spectrum of science and engineering curricula the influence of both methodology and the analytical framework on the identification of relevant variables is explored particular attention is then given to nonmarket influences typically assumed in previous studies not to play a significant role results for pooled and time series specifications provide some support for the hypothesis that curriculum choice follows labor market developments but they also suggest that abilities and interests may be important predictors

a qualitative study of managerial challenges facing small business geographic expansion abstract geographic expansion is a common growth strategy used by small entrepreneurial firms yet despite the importance of geographic expansion as a growth strategy it is a neglected area of small business research to date research in the area of small business growth has focused on broad issues such as the common obstacles to firm growth and the relationship between firm growth and firm profitability whereas this literature is suggestive it does not provide specific prescriptive advice to small business managers pursuing geographic expansion as a growth strategy as a first step in generating prescriptive advice in this area this study examined the managerial challenges that faced one small firm during the early stages of its efforts to expand geographically the subject organization referred to as the local advertising company lac operated in a single location from 1968 to 1990 as a means to initiate firm growth the owners of the company opened eight new locations in 1991 and eight more in 1992 however problems ensued this study used a qualitative research methodology to conduct an assessment of the managerial challenges facing the lac during its geographic expansion effort seventeen key employees of lac were interviewed for the study the qualitative case study methodology used provided an opportunity to gather in depth information from informants regarding their individual assessment of the managerial challenges encountered by lac during its geographic expansion collectively the respondents identified a number of specific management issues that became problematic during lac s geographic expansion effort through a content analysis technique these issues were organized into 15 thematic categories including training recruitment and selection the relationship between the field staff and the original owners and 12 others each of these categories represents the separate managerial challenges faced by the company during its geographic expansion the study provides a descriptive analysis of each of the 15 categories of managerial challenges that emerged the research results suggest that the successful management of a geographic expansion growth strategy requires managers to deal with a unique set of issues for example the training of new employees may become problematic when the most experienced personnel in the firm reside in the home office and the new trainees are located in widely dispersed geographic locations in addition the results of the study provide an extension to both practical and theoretical knowledge in three distinct areas planning for growth managing growth and the reasons for growth first the results of the study support the importance of planning for growth but suggest that planning must be complemented by learning and a willingness to evolve one s plan as growth progresses in terms of the management of growth the case shows that running a small business and growing a small business do not include the same skill set the owners of lac had been quite successful managing their single location for 22 years however this ability to run a business did not complement the need to anticipate start up problems in new remote sites which is inherent in a strategy of geographic expansion in addition the case demonstrated that the management of growth requires a cognizance on the part of the original owners of a firm to delegate control finally with regard to the reasons for growth researchers generally characterize firm growth as being motivated by either economic e g economies of scale or emotional reasons e g employing family members the owners of lac initiated firm growth for the purpose of wealth creation to fund their retirements this illustrates that firm growth can be motivated by a combination of both economic e g wealth creation and personal e g retirement security reasons

demand for an undergraduate education in the agricultural sciences undergaduate enrollments in the agricultural and natural resource sciences agnr declined during the 1980s the present study sought to analyze factors affecting the drop in demand for an agnr education two time series pooled models were employed a household production function hpf variant and a mincerian human capital form the hpf variant offers the empirical advantage of a price expression that accounts for changes in agnr demand beyond significant wealth structural regional and gender effects high opportunity costs of agnr careers stalled demand during the 1980s a problem that may persist for some agnr career areas

an empirical analysis of petroleum demand for indonesia an application of the cointegration approach this paper uses selection criteria from various models in a bounds testing approach to cointegration to estimate the price and income elasticities of demand for total petroleum products gasoline and diesel and gasoline share in total products in indonesia the results suggest that both total products and gasoline share estimates are more responsive to changes in income than changes in the real price of petroleum products these results have important policy implications as they suggest that policy makers may need to use market based pricing policies and other policies such as public enlightenment in addition to regulations like minimum energy efficiency standards to promote efficiency and conservation and curb the rising consumption of petroleum products in indonesia

entrepreneurs perceived chances for success abstract entrepreneurs involved in planning or starting firms must engage in a continuing process of appraising prospects for success these assessments presumably bear upon the preparations they make as well as at some later point whether they decide to make major changes or even to discontinue the business in this study data from 2994 entrepreneurs who had recently become business owners were analyzed to determine their perceived changes of success although previous evidence on business survival led to the hypothesis that the entrepreneurs would only be cautiously optimistic this was not the case they perceived their prospects as very favorable with 81 seeing odds of 7 out of 10 or better and a remarkable 33 seeing odds of success of 10 out of 10 in considering the prospects for other businesses like their own they perceived odds which were significantly lower but still moderately favorable based upon previous research on factors associated with new business success it was hypothesized that those who were more likely to succeed based upon their personal backgrounds and the nature of their new firms would be more optimistic however this was not the case those who were poorly prepared were just as optimistic as those who were well prepared at this point shortly after having become business owners the assessment by entrepreneurs of their own likelihood of success was dramatically detached from past macro statistics from perceived prospects for peer businesses and from characteristics typically associated with higher performing new firms the psychological literature on post decisional bolstering suggests that decision makers in many settings tend to bolster or exaggerate the attractiveness of an option after it has been chosen this coupled with the tendency of entrepreneurs to believe that they can control their own destinies implies that the extreme optimism observed here is probably a typical occurrence for entrepreneurs the findings suggest that it is probably natural to experience feelings of entrepreneurial euphoria when first becoming a business owner with the available evidence it is difficult to judge whether this leads to inadequate preparations or an inability to diagnose problems and make adjustments after the business is started this extreme optimism probably does contribute to the heavy personal commitments observed here in which the median entrepreneur devoted more than 60 hours per week to the business the entrepreneur would seem well advised to form relationships with outsiders such as board members and professional advisors who can be objective and detached in diagnosing problems and assessing objectively the prospects for the business in its current form

demand for gasoline in kuwait an empirical analysis using cointegration techniques abstract this paper estimates the demand for gasoline in kuwait for the period 1970 1989 using a cointegration and error correction model ecm it is found that gasoline demand is inelastic with respect to price in the short and long run and while it is elastic in the long run gasoline demand is inelastic with respect to income in the short run this suggests that gasoline demand response to income changes is higher in the long run than in the short run furthermore gasoline consumption adjusts towards its long run level with about 52 of the adjustment occurring in the first year

energy demand in ghana a disaggregated analysis this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of energy demand in ghana by estimating demand functions for key disaggregated energy components including gasoline diesel liquefied petroleum gas lpg kerosene biomass residual fuel oil rfo and electricity our results show that energy prices income urbanization and economic structure are significant demand drivers of the different energy types in ghana with varying estimated elasticities further there is evidence of high degree of inter fuel substitution in energy demand in ghana particularly from gasoline diesel and kerosene towards lpg consumption we recommend among different policy options a customization of energy price subsidization policies especially on lpg to reduce the unintended beneficiary dilemma or spillover effect of current government policy other policies such as intensification of energy conservation programs and market entry of independent power trading companies to enhance energy service delivery through competition are also discussed

variable risk preferences in new firm growth and survival we outline and test a decision making theory of new venture growth and survival building upon research in entrepreneurship and decision making under risk we hypothesize that entrepreneurs attention to survival and aspiration reference points changes based on venture age experience based learning size differences in decision complexity and performance decision domain examining a panel of 14 760 new ventures in the professional services sector our findings show how risk preferences change as a venture ages and increases in size this approach offers a more nuanced view of decision making under risk and provides a theoretical explanation for the common patterns of new ventures probability of exit and growth diminishing with age and size

preferences and prices in choice of career the switch to business 1972 1987 abstract in the last two decades the largest single change in career plans of college students is the more than doubling from 1972 to 1987 of the proportion opting for business the evidence suggests that a shift in preferences a marked upsurge among the young in money making as a life goal was responsible for this as well as movements in prices the relative returns from different occupations the rise in interest in money making is not due to greater insecurity among the young about their economic future or worsened job expectations rather it reflects greater concern about money among older adults which influenced the young with a lag by re shaping their life goals as they grew up empirical study of occupational choice would benefit from more attention to such non market influences

short and long run elasticities in energy demand a cointegration approach abstract short and long run energy demand elasticities are estimated on danish annual data for 1948 1990 energy consumption the real price of energy and real gdp appear to be non stationary variables cointegration and error correction methods are therefore applied all estimated parameters have the expected signs and magnitudes and no evidence is found of a structural break in energy demand caused by the increases in real energy prices since 1973 74

electricity demand in kazakhstan properties of electricity demand in transition economies have not been sufficiently well researched mostly due to data limitations however information on the properties of electricity demand is necessary for policy makers to evaluate effects of price changes on different consumers and obtain demand forecasts for capacity planning this study estimates kazakhstan s aggregate demand for electricity as well as electricity demand in the industrial service and residential sectors using regional data firstly our results show that price elasticity of demand in all sectors is low this fact suggests that there is considerable room for price increases necessary to finance generation and distribution system upgrading secondly we find that income elasticity of demand in the aggregate and all sectoral models is less than unity of the three sectors electricity demand in the residential sector has the lowest income elasticity this result indicates that policy initiatives to secure affordability of electricity consumption to lower income residential consumers may be required finally our forecast shows that electricity demand may grow at either 3 or 5 per year depending on rates of economic growth and government policy regarding price increases and promotion of efficiency we find that planned supply increases would be sufficient to cover growing demand only if real electricity prices start to increase toward long run cost recovery levels and policy measures are implemented to maintain the current high growth of electricity efficiency

delegating the decision making authority to terminate a sequential project abstract this paper considers a two stage project which requires investments to be made by different agents who have career concerns at each stage the principal needs to decide whether the project should be continued or not after the first stage outcome is realized the principal can either keep the decision making authority regarding the termination policy or else delegate it to one of the agents with career concerns the first stage agent always wants to continue the project in which case the sunk cost fallacy occurs on the contrary the second stage agent may prefer to stop it voluntarily to protect his reputation therefore when the career concerns are strong the principal should delegate the authority to the second stage agent if an early termination of the project is also the best policy for the principal while if the career concerns are weak the principal should keep the authority

short and long run elasticities in us residential electricity demand a co integration approach abstract co integration techniques show promise in the analysis of short and long run effects of economic variables on energy use we use these techniques to develop an error correction model of annual us residential electricity demand we construct equipment stock indices and estimate the model for 1949 1993 our analysis suggests a structural shift in consumption during the 1960s we discuss reasons for this shift report the short and long run elasticities provide forecasts for 1994 1995 and compare the model s forecasts with other published forecasts

panel studies of new venture creation a methods focused review and suggestions for future research longitudinal panel studies of large random samples of business start ups captured at the pre operational stage allow researchers to address core issues for entrepreneurship research namely the processes of creation of new business ventures as well as their antecedents and outcomes here we perform a methods orientated review of all 83 journal articles that have used this type of data set our purpose being to assist users of current data sets as well as designers of new projects in making the best use of this innovative research approach our review reveals a number of methods issues that are largely particular to this type of research we conclude that amidst exemplary contributions much of the reviewed research has not adequately managed these methods challenges nor has it made use of the full potential of this new research approach specifically we identify and suggest remedies for context specific and interrelated methods challenges relating to sample definition choice of level of analysis operationalization and conceptualization use of longitudinal data and dealing with various types of problematic heterogeneity in addition we note that future research can make further strides towards full utilization of the advantages of the research approach through better matching from either direction between theories and the phenomena captured in the data and by addressing some under explored research questions for which the approach may be particularly fruitful

modelling electricity demand in ghana revisited the role of policy regime changes as policy regime changes demand elasticities are unlikely to be constant since individuals change how they form their expectations and this will change the estimated decision rules in this paper the time varying nature of electricity demand elasticities prior to and post the economic reform period in ghana is analysed using the fm ols three different sample periods pre reform post reform and full period was used in the analysis the result from the full sample period revealed that in the long run electricity demand is significantly affected by industry efficiency industry value added and real per capita gdp urbanization rate however has no significant effect the pre reform estimate showed lower income output and urbanization elasticities but higher industry energy efficiency elasticity relative to the post reform period this suggests that technological change in the pre reform period has been energy saving whilst technological change in the post reform period has been energy consuming the result further showed evidence of changing structure of the economy from the more energy intensive sector to the less energy intensive sector after the reform government should renew her effort in promoting energy saving technologies in the industrial sector and adjust the industrial structure to encourage the expansion of low energy intensive industries or high technology efficient industries

the demand for gasoline in south africa an empirical analysis using co integration techniques abstract using the recently developed autoregressive distributed lag ardl bound testing approach to co integration suggested by pesaran et al pesaran m h shin y smith r j bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 2001 16 3 289 326 we empirically analyzed the long run relationship among the variables in the aggregate gasoline demand function over the period 1978 2005 our study confirms the existence of a co integrating relationship the estimated price and income elasticities of 0 47 and 0 36 imply that gasoline demand in south africa is price and income inelastic

short run long run and cross elasticities of gasoline demand in brazil gasoline is one of the most important of the oil derived products its importance is closely related to its participation in the value of imports of many countries and in a number of cases it is one of the determinants of their balance of payment deficit fiscal deficit and economic growth as opposed to most nations brazil has had a gasoline substitute since 1985 alcohol many studies have tried to estimate the income and price elasticities of the demand for gasoline in several countries this paper extends previous studies by estimating the cross price elasticity between gasoline and alcohol our findings indicate that alcohol is an imperfect substitute for gasoline even in the long run as a consequence the need for a new fuel substitution must be initiated long before petroleum reserves vanish

strategic experimentation understanding change and performance in new ventures abstract this research was motivated by an interest in understanding more about the extent to which entrepreneurs initiate changes along various dimensions of strategy the nature of those changes and their implications for firm performance our interest in this topic began with the observation that within the large body of strategic change literature the research effort has focused almost exclusively on large and established firms moreover a fundamental assumption underlying much of this work is that strategic change involves movement from one dominant strategic approach to another this premise does little to motivate or contribute to the understanding of change and strategy in new ventures where it is less likely that a dominant approach exists thus we drew upon the literature in managerial cognition to develop the idea of strategic experimentation as the conceptual foundation for studying change and strategy in new ventures our basic premise is that in new ventures changes along dimensions of strategy are reflective of a process of trial and error learning whereby the entrepreneur seeks to develop an understanding of the competitive situation and determine how to compete within that context further we suggest that some aspects of the firm s strategy are more likely to be the focus of experimentation than others building on these premises we developed a series of research hypotheses which propose that the greater the level of perceived environmental hostility the higher the level of strategic experimentation that will be undertaken we also propose that experimentation will always be greater along some dimensions of strategy than others and that the degree of environmental hostility will influence the extent to which there are performance benefits associated with strategic experimentation our hypotheses are tested using data from a three year study of over 400 young businesses overall we find support for our assertions for entrepreneurs and their advisors this study has several important implications first it suggests that strategic experimentation is a normal part of the process by which entrepreneurs seek to position their businesses although the present study does not empirically address the linkage between formal planning and experimentation the learning and cognition literature upon which the construct of strategic experimentation is based suggests that no matter how much attention to detail is involved in the preparation of the business plan the actual formation and development of the business will involve considerable adjustment to and or deviation from that plan this is because the process of new business development involves iterative changes in the way the entrepreneur positions his her firm as he she develops an understanding about what does and does not work the results of this study further suggest that some dimensions of the firm s strategy are more likely to change than others specifically it appears that peripheral changes competitive emphasis and time allocation are more likely to be the focus of such learning and adaptation efforts than core features product scope and partnership status this in part is because the former dimensions are easier to change than the latter moreover our results show that ventures in more hostile environments clearly face difficult dilemmas although poor performance may stimulate experimentation along various dimensions of strategy the complexity of learning within a hostile environment suggests that entrepreneurs will have a particularly difficult time determining the type of changes that will make a difference

short and long run adjustments in u s petroleum consumption long run adjustments in petroleum consumption are not only larger than short run adjustments they may also be motivated by entirely different price events this analysis shows that new price peaks have both short run and long run consumption responses a result that is starkly different than price changes that track previous price paths it also establishes significant trend effects where gasoline and residual fuel oil consumption decline over time the analysis explores these adjustments by establishing long run cointegrating relationships for different petroleum product groupings an important implication is that price increases above historical levels may be providing substantially greater incentives for significant long run demand adjustments than would be the case otherwise

double majors one for me one for the parents i introduction at least a quarter of college students have more than one undergraduate major 2003 national survey of college graduates and the share of college students choosing more than one major is increasing at a very fast rate lewin 2002 it has been postulated that parents inadvertently drive their children to have more than one major that is students major in one field to satisfy their own interests and in another field that meets parents approval 1 other explanations for double majors include students majoring in one field associated with their professional specialty and another that reflects a very different interest like an engineering major who is also majoring in french or students hedging their chances in the labor market by preparing to work in more than field however evidence for all these explanations remains anecdotal gomstyn 2003 lewin 2002 and there is little systematic evidence on how students choose the composition of their double majors this article provides to the best of my knowledge the first direct evidence on how students conditional on having a double major choose the composition of majors 2 students choose a college major or pair of majors in order to influence the occurrence of choice specific outcomes that enter their utility function these outcomes include for example being able to successfully complete a field of study gaining parents approval finding a job upon graduation enjoying coursework or earnings at the job as these outcomes are uncertain at the time the student makes his choice he has a belief distribution of the probability for the occurrence of these outcomes conditional on each major in his choice set therefore a student uses both his preferences and subjective beliefs in choosing his college major s the researcher usually only observes the major s that the student chooses and has to make nonverifiable assumptions on expectations beliefs to infer the parameters of the utility function preferences the basic difficulty is that observed choices may be consistent with several combinations of expectations and preferences and the list of underlying assumptions on expectations may not be valid see manski 1993 for a discussion of this inference problem in the context of how students infer returns to schooling a solution to this identification problem is to use additional data on expectations manski 2004 and that is precisely what i do i survey a group of 69 northwestern university students pursuing double majors and elicit their subjective beliefs about major specific outcomes in my relatively homogenous sample there is substantial heterogeneity in beliefs for outcomes within a major as well as across majors indicative that there exists tremendous heterogeneity in beliefs in the population of college students analysis of beliefs for the same outcome across majors suggests that students have sensible beliefs about the occurrence of outcomes conditional on major for example the belief distribution of reconciling work and family at jobs available in literature and fine arts first order stochastically dominates the corresponding distribution in natural sciences in which most pre med students major comparison of beliefs of being able to graduate with a grade point average gpa of at least 3 5 and expected income at the age of 30 with objective measures reveals that students are aware of differences across majors i find that students believe that their parents are more likely to approve majors associated with high social status and returns in the labor market for example the mean belief of gaining parents approval for majoring in engineering is 0 87 on a scale of 0 1 compared with 0 59 for literature and fine arts the subjective data elicited from the students is employed directly in a structural model of double major choice 3 although i assume that students are forward looking and care about future outcomes when making their choices i do not have data needed to estimate a dynamic model

how price inelastic is demand for gasoline in fuel subsidizing economies abstract in recent years governments that have historically subsidized domestic fuel consumption face an ever growing challenge in maintaining fuel subsidies and have embarked on subsidy reform this paper estimates the price and income elasticity of demand for gasoline in countries where fuel prices are government subsidized we make use of biennial panel road sector data for 32 countries over the 1998 2010 period and find demand for gasoline to be price inelastic both in the short run and long run we estimate the short run price and income elasticities at 0 05 and 0 16 and the long run price and income elasticities at 0 25 and 0 81 respectively it is our contention that concerned governments should play an active role in identifying and committing to a road map to progressively abandoning fuel subsidies they should also not be discouraged by relatively small consumption corrections in the short run a reduction in subsidies can eventually release considerable amount of resources for more crucial and potentially growth enhancing public services such as education and health

overoptimism and the performance of entrepreneurial firms recent theoretical and empirical research on cognitive bias in decision making suggests that overoptimism critically influences entrepreneurs decisions to establish and sustain new ventures we investigate whether such cognitive bias influences entrepreneurial venture performance using data on commercialization efforts for university inventions in contrast to prior studies our results suggest that entrepreneurial overoptimism does not appear to be the determining factor in the decision to found a firm we do find that entrepreneurs continue unsuccessful development efforts for longer periods of time than do established firms which is consistent with entrepreneurial overoptimism in the development of technologies with uncertain market prospects this latter finding is also consistent with rationality based models of decision making behavior however we find that the economic returns associated with many of the technologies in our sample are realized after the start up has been acquired by an established firm suggesting that start ups may serve as a transitional organizational form in the market for technology commercialization

reinvestment decisions by entrepreneurs rational decision making or escalation of commitment abstract among the most important decisions made by entrepreneurs are those relating to whether to expand maintain or contract their businesses we would expect these major commitments to be based upon expectations about future performance these expectations in turn would be heavily influenced by performance to date thus we might presume that businesses that have been receiving favorable feedback from the marketplace would be more likely to expand and those receiving negative feedback would be more likely to contract ongoing research in decision making suggests that psychological processes may play a role in influencing these decisions under certain conditions entrepreneurs may be influenced by a phenomenon termed escalation of commitment this may lead entrepreneurs to decide to expand the asset bases of their firms regardless of feedback from the marketplace the literature on escalation of commitment suggests that under certain conditions decision makers who make an initial decision become overly committed to the original choice and then subsequently make decisions biased by psychological commitment previous research most of which has been conducted in laboratory settings suggests that escalation bias is more likely to occur 1 if entrepreneurs have started their firms rather than purchased them 2 if entrepreneurs have partners 3 if entrepreneurs expect to use their skills in the new business and 4 if entrepreneurs are overconfident that is expected to do substantially better than others in the same kinds of business it is also expected that these escalation predictors will have a relatively greater influence when feedback is negative than when it is positive the negative feedback seems to invoke a self justification process it is also hypothesized that the influence of these predictors will be less in the third year of a business than in the second year finally it is expected that these psychological influences will help to provide systematic explanation of reinvestment decisions over and beyond what one could predict based upon financial feedback the hypotheses were tested using data from a longitudinal study involving 1112 firms it was found that entrepreneurs who had started their firms and those who had expressed substantial over confidence were significantly more likely to make the decision to expand the hypotheses that those who had partners and those who expected to apply their skills would be more likely to expand were not supported furthermore and consistent with previous research these psychological escalation predictors seemed to exert a greater influence when feedback from the marketplace was negative as expected there was a declining influence in the third year as compared with the second consistent with the prior literature and the hypotheses these psychological predictors did show a small but systematic influence upon reinvestment decisions decisions to expand or contract a business are not necessarily good or bad however it is important that entrepreneurs be aware of the factors influencing their decisions entrepreneurs should recognize that the escalation bias tendency is likely to occur seeking independent opinions from advisors who do not feel as much personal responsibility for the original decision to start may lead to more objective evaluation of alternatives advisors should also realize that the inclination to escalate exists and is natural they may thereby be able to guard against the tendency to be swept along by the entrepreneur s enthusiasm and propensity to escalate entrepreneurs and their advisors as well as researchers should recognize that important entrepreneurial decisions are often influenced by psychological as well as economic factors this awareness should enable entrepreneurs to make more rational decisions

sunk cost fallacy in driving the world s costliest cars we develop a behavioral model of durable good usage with mental accounting for sunk costs it predicts higher than rational usage that attenuates at a rate that increases with sunk costs singapore government policy varied the sunk cost of buying a new car using singapore data we estimate the elasticity of driving with respect to sunk costs to be 0 048 which implies that government policy between 2009 and 2013 was associated with 86 kilometers per month or 5 6 more driving the results are robust to specifying sunk costs as relative to buyer income and estimation with hong kong data we believe this to be the first field evidence of the sunk cost fallacy in usage of a major durable good the online appendix is available at https doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2016 2651 this paper was accepted by john list behavioral economics

modelling demand for crude oil products in spain this paper develops an econometric model for the five most important crude oil products demand in spain the aim is the estimation of a range of elasticities of such demands that would serve as the basis for an applied general equilibrium model used for forecasting energy demand in a broader framework the main distinctive features of the system with respect to previous literature are i it takes advantage of monthly information coming from very different information sources and ii multivariate unobserved components uc models are implemented allowing for a separate analysis of long and short run relations uc models decompose time series into a number of unobserved though economic meaningful components mainly trend seasonal and irregular a module is added to such structure to take into account the influence of exogenous variables necessary to compute price cross and income elasticities since all models implemented are multivariate in nature the demand components are allowed to interact among them through the system noises similar to a seemingly unrelated equations model the results show unambiguously that the main factor driving demand is real income with prices having little impact on energy consumption

predicted future earnings and choice of college major using data from the national longitudinal survey of young men the author of this paper examines the relationship between predicted future earnings for five broad fields of study and college students choice of major conditional logit models of major choice that incorporate alternative predicted earnings variables are specified and estimated the results indicate that holding family background characteristics constant individuals are likely to choose majors offering greater streams of future earnings rather than as some have argued majors with higher beginning earnings at the time of the choice it is also found that earnings profiles corrected for self selection bias have flattened for more recent graduates in business liberal arts and education the life cycle earnings in these disciplines appear to be more severely depressed than those in science and engineering

choice of specialization do peers matter social influence is an important factor in learning and decision making we estimate peer influence on student choice of specialization using data on undergraduate students of a russian university information about individual social ties has been gathered from a questionnaire survey we show that specialization choice is significantly influenced by friends as well as by study partners the strongest effect is produced by friends who are study partners and those who have similar academic achievements reciprocal friendship ties have a stronger influence on the choice than nonreciprocal ones also the decision is affected by classmates with similar academic achievement the results allow us to better understand the mechanisms of peer effects in the specialization choice

returns to field of study versus school quality mba selection on observed and unobserved heterogeneity i introduction given the importance of human capital investment prospective college students and parents must often choose between higher quality and cost and lower quality and cost schools the considerable literature that has examined this trade off identifies not only school quality as a principal driver of postbaccalaureate earnings but also students choice over fields of study 1 despite the attention lavished on school rankings james et al 1989 for example conclude that college experience variables especially major explain more of the variance in earnings than measured family background ability and college characteristics combined 252 2 that is a prospective baccalaureate student can expect strong future earnings not only by attending a highly ranked institution but also by majoring in a highly rewarded field such as engineering the sciences or business at a lesser ranked school surprisingly this important conclusion about the trade off between content and quality has not been generalized to any other postsecondary degree programs such as associate degrees at community colleges or master s of education master s of business administration mba law medical or phd programs the goal of this article is to fill this void in the literature by estimating the returns to both program quality and fields of specialization in the context of graduate education specifically we estimate these returns for the third most commonly earned postsecondary degree the mba morgeson and nahrgang 2008 prior research has estimated a large drop off in returns to an mba beyond the nation s elite programs arcidiacono et al 2008 because of this and because mbas are likely to face significant opportunity costs of moving to attend a more highly ranked program than what may be available locally estimating the tradeoffs between returns to program quality and to fields of specialization is especially important for mbas in the data set used in this study the average mba student had about 6 yr of full time work experience half were married and 27 had children however if family and job ties restrict potential mba students from enrolling in more highly ranked programs might they nonetheless be able to earn high wage premiums by specializing their studies in fields with higher returns our study focuses on mba areas of concentration in response to competitive pressures and consumer demand many business schools have offered the opportunity for students to go beyond the core mba curriculum by tailoring additional coursework toward a particular area 3 in this way mba concentrations mirror the role of undergraduate majors unfortunately to our knowledge no entity such as the association of advance collegiate schools or business aacsb or the graduate management admissions council gmac systematically collects information about the specific courses that constitute areas of concentration by mba program the structure and actual courses included in concentrations within mba programs vary from school to school akin to differences among undergraduate business programs 4 however mba concentrations typically consist of four to five topical courses but range as high as seven or more according to dierdorff and rubin s 2008 survey of 576 of the 621 programs in the united states accredited by the aacsb 5 perhaps the main distinction between undergraduate and mba fields of study is that while most u s undergraduate business programs offer the full array of standard business fields that is general management finance accounting marketing management information systems mis and international business mba areas of concentration despite their increasing prevalence are more selectively offered by schools furthermore the presence of areas of concentration does not appear to be correlated with overall school quality suggesting that the quality of program attended and the choice of focus of study may be two independent drivers of increased earnings among graduates