Is the Second Time the Charm for Students Repeating Introductory Finance?

In this paper, we examine the performance of students who repeat an introductory finance course, and compare this performance to that of students who take this course for the first time. We find that students who completed the course in the past with a failing or passing grade show a considerable grade improvement on their subsequent attempt. Moreover, after taking into account student GPA, students who previously passed the course significantly outperform new students. Students who failed the course in the past show only a marginally higher grade compared to new students. In contrast, the performance of students who dropped or withdrew from the course is not significantly different from the performance of new students