TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Fricke, Hans
AU  - Grogger, Jeffrey
AU  - Steinmayr, Andreas
        TI  - Does Exposure to Economics Bring New Majors to the Field? Evidence from a Natural Experiment
        PY  - 2015/Apr/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 9003
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp9003
        AB  - This study investigates how being exposed to a field of study influences students' major choices. We exploit a natural experiment at a Swiss university where all first-year students face largely the same curriculum before they choose a major. An important component of the first-year curriculum that varies between students involves a multi-term research paper in business, economics, or law. Due to oversubscription of business, the university assigns the field of the paper in a standardized way that is unrelated to student characteristics. We find that being assigned to write in economics raises the probability of majoring in economics by 2.7 percentage points, which amounts to 18 percent of the share of students who major in economics.
        KW  - higher education
KW  - law
KW  - economics
KW  - major choice
KW  - gender differences
        ER  -