Success in the economics major: is it path dependent?

A large body of literature investigates different aspects of the undergraduate economics major, including how it can become more popular, effective and relevant to today's students. An additional body of literature identifies key student and curriculum characteristics that promote success in the classroom and major. The chapter contributes to these streams of literature by exploring whether course sequencing, within the economics major, significantly affects student performance. The authors find that success in the major is path dependent as a general rule. They also discover that course sequence may not play a significant role in explaining the performance of students in advanced courses for some subfields of economics. Furthermore, their results indicate that student performance in principles courses, particularly principles of macroeconomics, is a significant predictor of success in the major.