Rational Students and Resit Exams
11 Pages
Posted: 6 Oct 2012
Tilburg University - Center and Faculty of Economics and Business Administration; IZA Institute of Labor Economics
Abstract
Resit exams – extra opportunities to do an exam in the same academic year – are widely prevalent in European higher education, but uncommon in the US. I present a simple theoretical model to compare rational student behavior in the case of only one exam opportunity versus the case of two exam opportunities. Numerical examples for a wide range of plausible parameter values show that a second exam opportunity increases the ultimate passing probability only slightly, but strongly reduces average total student effort.
Keywords: frequency of examinations, education production function, rationality
JEL Classification: D01, I21
Suggested Citation:
Suggested Citation
Kooreman, Peter, Rational Students and Resit Exams. IZA Discussion Paper No. 6832. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2157974
