This dissertation uses three empirical papers to examine the relationship between student gender, student's income expectations for the future, and persistence in schooling. First, I use survey data from the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS) to examine how both children's and parent's earnings expectations for students in 12th grade vary by…

In this paper, we estimate a rich model of college major choice using a panel of experimentally-derived data. Our estimation strategy combines two types of data: data on self-reported beliefs about future earnings from potential human capital decisions and survey-based measures of risk and time preferences. We show how to use these data to…

This article analyses the differences between expected and actual wages of VET students and graduates. It uses a survey of VET students enrolled in schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and data about employed VET graduates from the Labour Force Survey. The model of determinants of wages, expected or actual, estimated separately on each dataset,…

The share of women achieving tertiary education has increased rapidly over time and now exceeds that of men in most OECD countries. However, women are severely under-represented in maths-intensive science fields, which are generally referred to as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths). The under-representation of women in these…

Gender differences in wage expectations may affect investment in human capital and increase inequalities in the labour market. Our research based on a survey of first-year students at a French university aims to focus on expectations at the beginning of the career. Our results show that anticipated earnings differ significantly between men and…

Policy makers, academics, and media reports suggest that women could shrink the gender pay gap by negotiating more effectively for higher compensation. Yet women entering compensation negotiations face a dilemma: They have to weigh the benefits of negotiating against the social consequences of having negotiated. Research shows that women are…

This report revisits the debate about why social mobility levels are relatively low in Great Britain and the United States of America compared to other countries. It focuses on three main areas within this debate: (1) the changing role of educational inequalities; (2) the expectation of ever higher levels of education as revealed in increasing…

Because pay expectations play a role in the persistent gender pay gap, we surveyed 435 undergraduate students to examine the impacts of gender, job intentions, and self-views on the pay expectations of pre-career women and men. Our findings showed a gender gap in which women expected to be paid less than men expected to be paid at the beginning…

While there is an extensive literature on intergenerational transmission of economic outcomes (education, health and income for example), many of the pathways through which these outcomes are transmitted are not as well understood. We address this deficit by analysing the relationship between socio-economic status and child outcomes in university,…

A large proportion of the gender wage gap is usually left unexplained. In this paper, we investigate whether the unexplained component is due to misspecification. Using a sample of recent UK graduates, we introduce variables on career expectations and character traits, variables that are typically not observed. The evidence indicates that women…

We report the results of an experiment designed to elicit students' subjective beliefs about the economic returns to college education. An important feature of our experimental design is the inclusion of financial incentives for accurate reporting. We also consider the extent to which individuals' beliefs about their own returns differ from their…