Abstract:
We use admission lotteries from nine higher education programs in the Netherlands to investigate whether someone's field of study influences the study choices of younger siblings, younger cousins and younger neighbors. We find that younger siblings and younger cousins are affected, while younger neighbors are not. These findings indicate that a large part of the correlation in study choices of family members is due to spillover effects and not due to shared environment. Effects are heterogeneous by sex composition and parental income. Our findings differ from those of recent studies based on admission thresholds, which find no sibling spillovers in field of study (major) choices. Because we find no differential spillovers from lottery participants at the lower end of the ability distribution, we conclude that the different findings cannot be attributed the different research designs (leveraging admission lotteries versus admission thresholds). Instead, we argue that the different findings are probably due to differences in institutional settings.
The seminar will be held in room 1249 (12th floor) at Eilert Sundts Hus. The address is Moltke Moes vei 31.