Capturing a College Education’s Impact on Industry Wages Across Time: An Analysis of Academic Factors that Affect Earnings
Abstract
Studying how a college education can impact one’s wages has always been an area of
interest amongst labor and education economists. While previous studies have stressed
using single academic factors (i.e. college major choice, performance, or college
prestige) to determine the effect on wages, there has not been a focus on predicting
wages given industries and a combination of these academic factors across time. Therefore,
the crux of my thesis seeks to provide a new model which incorporates college major
choice, GPA, industry selection across time, college type (private or public), natural
ability (standardized test scores), and several demographic variables in order to
predict percent increase/decrease in wages. My results show that college major choice,
academic performance, natural ability, and industry selection (together) do have a
significant impact on earnings, and they are appropriate measures to predict post-graduation
wages.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
EconomicsPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/5129Citation
Low, Ian (2012). Capturing a College Education’s Impact on Industry Wages Across Time: An Analysis
of Academic Factors that Affect Earnings. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/5129.Collections
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