MICROECONOMICS OF COLLEGE CHOICE, CAREERS, AND WAGES

Understanding the economic payoff to human capital investments is very important from the standpoint both of individuals and of society. How ever, this article argues that correctly estimating these impacts nece ssitates having a well-developed idea of the microeconomic determinant s of human behavior. Without this, empirical analyses of such topics a s career choice, college choice, or wage determination will be flawed. The authors begin the article with a discussion of why these choice m odels are important-using examples of similar attempts that do not cap ture sufficient information-and illustrate their usefulness in a varie ty of contexts. They also describe the results of their attempts to ex amine college choice using microeconomic models.