- Speaker
- Date
- Friday 9 Jun 2023, 15:30 - 16:45
- Type
- Seminar
- Room
- LAN 2.16
- Building
- Langeveld building
Education systems commonly require individuals to choose school tracks at a relatively young age. Such decisions involve a lot of uncertainty about future performance, are high stakes, and difficult to reverse. Based on a survey with a large sample of Danish adolescents who are about to make their first important schooling decision at age 15, we provide systematic evidence on individuals’ expected success probabilities in a high track programme.
(joint with Pia Pinger and Helena Willadsen)
Individual beliefs about high track success rates are qualitatively in line with actual success patterns by past school performance, gender and parental background observed in administrative data. However, boys as well as individuals with less educated parents are strongly over-optimistic about past success rates of individuals with similar characteristics and past performance as themselves.
Female students, in contrast, are less optimistic - mostly because they underestimate the degree to which females’ high track success has exceeded males’ in the past, and to a smaller extent because perceptions of the 'female bonus' do not carry over to expected own personal success probabilities. The same is true for groups with more vs. less highly educated parents.
We show that expectations of high track success matter for schooling decisions, suggesting that biased beliefs might lead to sub-optimal decisions. Using a randomised information treatment on recent cohorts' high track success conditional on elementary school grades, we find that individuals update beliefs about how challenging high track attendance will be for others with similar characteristics, but not for themselves.
About the speaker
Sonja’s work focuses on behavioral economics, organisational economics and health economics. She is particularly interested in the role of beliefs and expectations, and works on applied questions using observational and experimental data.
Registration
If you would like to schedule a bilateral, join for lunch or dinner on Friday evening, please send an email email to boring@ese.eur.nl.
