The Microeconomics of College Choice, Careers, and Wages: Measuring the Impact of Higher Education

Abstract

Understanding the economic payoff to human investments is very important from the standpoint both of individuals and of society. Correctly estimating these impacts necessitates having a well-developed idea of the microeconomic determinants of human behavior. Without this, empirical analyses of such topics as career choice, college choice, or wage determination will be flawed. We begin with a discussion of why these choice models are important--using examples of similar attempts that do not capture sufficient information--and illustrate their usefulness in a variety of contexts. We also describe the results of our attempts to examine college choice using microeconomic models.

JEL Classification: I2, J3