Student performance and subsequent effort increment investment: do students behave like producers?

We developed three hypotheses and a case study involving a sample of 203 students enrolled in four introductory microeconomics classes during the spring semesters of 2007 and 2009 to examine the effects of prior exam performance on increments for current in- and out-of-classroom efforts toward future exams. We found that students' prior exam performance is an important and significant signal of students' decisions to invest more or fewer in-/out-of-classroom efforts on the next exam. These findings also indirectly imply that many students may behave like producers in evaluating their previous production outcome and then deciding on a level of effort to invest in current production. In addition, we found that weaker students relative to stronger students could invest fewer efforts when they received poor exam grades. Comparing weaker students with stronger students, weaker students would be more likely to behave like producers.