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Revisiting the Effect of More Calculus on Student Learning in Intermediate Microeconomic Theory |
| The effect of
calculus attainment in intermediate microeconomic courses has been a
subject of debate for many years now. Butler et al. (1994) initiated the
discussion by showing that a second semester of calculus increases the
performance of intermediate microeconomics students significantly. They
did not find, however, much effect of a third calculus semester. Li and
Tobias (2006) corroborated these results. It is the aim of this document
to retake the subject and analyze it more carefully by testing the
relevance of the conditioning set and the specification. Instead of an OLS model, used by Butler et al., we will use a bivariate ordered probit model to estimate these presumed relationships. Although Li and Tobias conducted a similar exercise using Bayesian methods, they used dummy variables to capture calculus attainment rather than an ordered variable. We will close this gap by allowing the ordered structure of the data to be always present in the system. Additionally, we will address the problem of endogeneity by testing its existence and remodeling accordingly. Our finding indicate that calculus attainment is becomes more significant, even with larger semesters of calculus, after we fixed for the several problems of endogeneity and estimation, yielding its maximum benefit on microeconomic theory grades at a third semester.
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