IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amerec/v68y2023i2p277-294.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is It Still an Economics Course? The Effect of a Standardized Personal Finance Test on the Learning of Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Day
  • Evelyn Nunes
  • Bruno Sultanum

Abstract

We study the implications of mixing economics and personal finance standards in a high school course. Using administrative, survey, and testing data on college students, we find that learning personal finance can help the learning of economics for some students but hurt it for others. We estimate that students who received more instruction in economics score almost 5 percentage points higher on our economics test. Furthermore, we estimate the effect of being assigned a certification test in personal finance as a part of this course. Taking the personal finance certification test increases economics test scores by 2.5 percentage points for the average student, but this effect is not uniform across students. The certification test significantly increases the economics scores of students with low SAT scores, while decreasing the economics scores of those with high SAT scores. Our results emphasize the potentially idiosyncratic effects of mixing economics with personal finance.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Day & Evelyn Nunes & Bruno Sultanum, 2023. "Is It Still an Economics Course? The Effect of a Standardized Personal Finance Test on the Learning of Economics," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 68(2), pages 277-294, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:68:y:2023:i:2:p:277-294
    DOI: 10.1177/05694345221145153
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/05694345221145153
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/05694345221145153?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:68:y:2023:i:2:p:277-294. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/aex .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.