This collection contains Honours material from University of Adelaide students within the School of Economics. The material has been approved as making a significant contribution to knowledge.
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Browsing School of Economics by Author "Miller, Marcus"
This thesis explores the impact that university grades have on the labour market
outcomes of Australian students graduating from undergraduate study. Using cross sectional
data of students from the University of Adelaide, we investigate the effect
that a student’s grade point average has on both the likelihood of employment and
expected wages. We build on previous literature by using instrumental variable estimation
and sample-selection models to correct for potential biases in the model, which
also allows us to look at these two measures simultaneously. Our results suggest that
when the models of these two outcomes are estimated simultaneously, area of study
is the main source of variability in wages amongst individuals. Students’ grades and
employment history, which may have been expected to also influence wages, were
found to only have a significant impact on employment probability. This challenges
previous studies on graduate starting wages, which find positive impacts of these
measures on wages when they were looked at in isolation of employment outcomes.