Intertemporal Consistency of Predictors of Students' Performance in Economics Courses : Bootstrapping a Structural Equation Model

We use structural equation modelling in order to regress two factors describing cognitive abilities and a number of observable exogenous variables on the grade performance of students in economics courses at four half-year intervals. We apply a bootstrapping procedure in order to analyze the coefficients on the independent variables in the model. The results show that the predictive power of high school grades and other measures of cognitive abilities declines only slightly as students progress. In contrast, any gender differences among economics students are of a transitory nature