TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Brunello, Giorgio
AU  - Campo, Francesco
AU  - Lodigiani, Elisabetta
AU  - Miotto, Martina
AU  - Rocco, Lorenzo
        TI  - Tastes, Ability or Expected Wages? The Intended Choice of College Majors by Students in Italy
        PY  - 2026/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18444
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp18444
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - major choice
KW  - Italy
KW  - expectations
        ER  -