We investigate the wage return to studying
economics by leveraging a policy that prevented students with low introductory grades from declaring the major. Students who barely met the GPA threshold to major in
economics earned $22,000 (46%) higher annual early-career wages than they would have with their second-choice majors. Access to the
economics major shifts students preferences toward business/finance careers, and about half of the wage return is explained by
economics majors working in higher-paying industries. The causal return to majoring in
economics is very similar to observational earnings differences in nationally representative data ...