Microeconomics of College Choice, Careers, and Wages

Understanding the economic payoff to human capital investments is very important from the standpoint both of individuals and of society. However, this article argues that correctly estimating these impacts necessitates having a well-developed idea of the microeconomic determinants of human behavior. Without this, empirical analyses of such topics as career choice, college choice, or wage determination will be flawed. The authors begin the article with a discussion of why these choice models are important—using examples of similar attempts that do not capture sufficient information—and illustrate their usefulness in a variety of contexts. They also describe the results of their attempts to examine college choice using microeconomic models.