PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - John J. Conlon
TI  - Major Malfunction: A Field Experiment Correcting Undergraduates’ Beliefs about Salaries
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.56.3.0317-8599R2
DP  - 2019 Sep 16
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 0317-8599R2
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2019/09/10/jhr.56.3.0317-8599R2.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2019/09/10/jhr.56.3.0317-8599R2.full
AB  - I test, in a field experiment at a flagship state university in the US, whether providing college students salary information can affect their choices of major and classes. I find that undergraduates are substantially misinformed about mean salaries by major. On average, students in my sample underestimate mean salaries, but there is also large heterogeneity in beliefs across individuals. I also find that providing information to correct these errors has a large impact on students’ choices; students in the treatment group were nine percentage points (16%) more likely to major in a field about which they received information.