Determinants of Grades in Maths for Students in Economics

This paper investigates the determinants of grades achieved in mathematics by first year students Economics. We use individual administrative data from 1991 to 2005 to fit an educational production function. Our main findings suggest that good secondary school achievements and good maths skills (pre-college) are usually associated with higher grades. Ceteris paribus, females typically do better than males. Since students can postpone the exam or repeat it when they fail, we also analyse the determinants of the elapsed time to pass the exam using survival analysis. Estimating a competing risks model, we find that there is evidence of true negative duration dependence for high grades: the longer students wait to take the exam, the less likely they are to take high grades