Economic tradeoffs students place on location, salary, distances to natural resource amenities, size of the city where the job is located, and commuting times for their first college graduate job are estimated using a mixed logit model for a sample of Texas A&M University students. The Midwest is the least preferred area having a mean salary…

This paper uses a relatively large dataset of the stated academic major preferences of economics majors at a relatively large, not highly selective, public university in the USA to identify the "discouraged-business-majors" (DBMs). The DBM hypothesis addresses the phenomenon where students who are screened out of the business curriculum often…

Proponents of class size reductions (CSRs) draw heavily on the results from Project Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio to support their initiatives. Adding to the political appeal of these initiative are reports that minority and economically disadvantaged students received the largest benefits from smaller classes. We extend this research in two…

This paper presents empirical evidence from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2003 survey on the role of students' attitudes towards competition and cooperation in mathematical literacy achievement. While individual competitive attitudes are positively correlated with test scores, the reverse occurs when considering the…

This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation trying to explain individual time-to-degree variances with business cycle fluctuations. Assuming that students determine the optimum study length at university weighing up the cost of an additional semester against the consumption benefit of studying and not yet working, the general…

Recent evidence from Pakistan points to significant pro-male bias within households in the allocation of education expenditures. This raises two important questions. Is less spent on enrolled girls than boys through differential school-type choice for the two sexes; for example, through a greater likelihood of sending boys to fee-charging private…

This paper examines the effect of class size on student evaluations of the quality of an introductory mathematics course at Lund University in Sweden. In contrast to much other studies, we find a large negative, and statistically significant, effect of class size on the quality of the course. This result appears to be quite robust, as almost all…

Academic failure among first-year university students has long fuelled a large number of debates. Many educational psychologists have tried to understand and then explain it. Many statisticians have tried to foresee it. Our research aims to classify, as early in the academic year as possible, students into three groups: the "low-risk" students,…

This paper analyses students' application strategies to higher education, the effects of labour market expectations and admission probabilities. The starting hypothesis of this study is that students consider the expected utility of their choices, a function of expected net lifetime earnings and the probability of admission. Based on a survey…

In this study, the authors employed a quasi-experimental research design to examine the efficacy of a cooperative learning pedagogy (i.e., think-pair-share exercises) integrated into sections of microeconomic principles. Materials, exercises, and assessment instruments for all study sections are identical except for the nature of the…

The authors describe their experience with integrating a semester-long economic analysis project into an intermediate macroeconomic theory course. Students work in teams of "economic advisors" to write a series of nested reports that analyze the current state of the economy, and propose and evaluate policies for a decision-maker. The…

Over the last few years, classroom response systems (or "clickers") have become increasingly common. Although most systems require students to use a standalone handheld device, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) systems allow students to use devices they already own (e.g., a cell phone, tablet or laptop) to submit responses via text message or…

In this article, the authors examine two ways that they use music (i.e., popular song lyrics) as an active learning technique in an undergraduate history of economic thought course. First, they use music to help students grasp the ideas of the great thinkers in economics and see their relevance today. Second, because they require students to read…

Classroom experiments in economics continue to increase in popularity. While early experiments were often hand-run in class, now computerized online experiments are also widely available. Using a quasiexperimental approach, the authors investigated whether any difference in student achievement (as measured by course scores and the "Test of…

Blogs provide a dynamic interactive medium for online discussion, consistent with communal constructivist pedagogy. The author of this article describes and evaluates a blog assignment used in the teaching and assessment of a small (40-60 students) introductory economics course. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected across four…