Do Classroom Experiments Affect the Number of Economics Enrolments and Majors? A Study of Students in the United States

The present study follows a cohort of 290 students, at an American university, who were exposed to two different pedagogical approaches – traditional ‘chalkand-talk’ and classroom experiments. Although we find that the number of majors and upper division economics classes taken were not significantly different between the two groups as a whole, there were some differences across individual characteristics. For example, males who were exposed to classroom experiments enrolled in more upper division economics courses than similar males in the control group. Also, students in the experimental group who had taken economics in high school enrolled in more upper division economics courses than their counterparts in the control group. Minorities in the experimental group, however, enrolled in fewer upper division economics classes than their colleagues in the control group.