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Economic competence in early secondary school: Evidence from a large-scale assessment in Germany

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  • Oberrauch, Luis
  • Kaiser, Tim

Abstract

We employ a psychometrically validated performance test to study economic competence among representative sample of 1,687 early secondary school students in Southwest Germany. The rich dataset allows us to study variation in economic competence across school types and observable student characteristics. Our results show that economic competence is significantly lower among female students, migrants, students with parents of low socio-economic status and those who do not attend the highest track school type. Additionally, quantile regression analyses suggest that the gender gap increases along the distribution of economic competence and that effects of parents with high socio-economic status are more pronounced above the median of the competence distribution.

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  • Oberrauch, Luis & Kaiser, Tim, 2020. "Economic competence in early secondary school: Evidence from a large-scale assessment in Germany," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 35(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ireced:v:35:y:2020:i:c:s147738801930060x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.iree.2019.100172
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    Cited by:

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    2. Kaiser, Tim & Oberrauch, Luis, 2021. "Economic education at the expense of indoctrination? Evidence from Germany," EconStor Preprints 245801, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    3. Tim Kaiser & Luis Oberrauch & Günther Seeber, 2020. "Measuring economic competence of secondary school students in Germany," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(3-4), pages 227-242, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic competence; Economic literacy; Pre-college economic education; Item response theory; Gender gap;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A21 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Pre-college
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

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