IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/20483.html

Going back to the High Schools: Challenging Stereotypes about Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Smith, Sarah
  • Advani, Arun
  • Harvey, Laura

Abstract

Students may hold stereotyped beliefs about subjects that distort subject choices. For example, economics is believed to be about money, not inequality or well-being, and this perception may attract some students to the subject, while deterring others. We report results from a UK-wide high school outreach program in which undergraduate champions delivered economics taster sessions to 5,000+ students. The sessions increase students’ reported likelihood of studying economics by ~20 per cent. We shed light on what drives this increase. The sessions broaden students’ understanding of what economics is about and this accounts for ~20 per cent of the increased likelihood. The sessions also change students’ beliefs about (different attributes of) studying economics. The most important drivers of the increased likelihood are students’ increased beliefs that they will do well in economics and that they will enjoy studying the subject.

Suggested Citation

  • Smith, Sarah & Advani, Arun & Harvey, Laura, 2025. "Going back to the High Schools: Challenging Stereotypes about Economics," CEPR Discussion Papers 20483, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20483
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP20483
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • A22 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Undergraduate
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:cpr:ceprdp:20483. 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: CEPR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cepr.org/ .

    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.