This study examines the role of college graduates with degrees in the arts, STEM, and other creative fields as entrepreneurs and innovators in the US economy. As creativity is a trait of art students and is important for those acting as entrepreneurs and innovators in an economy, arts majors have the potential to play an important role in these areas. Using American Community Survey data, we look to identify arts, STEM, and other creative majors who are working in entrepreneurial occupations, those where self-employment is common, and innovative industries, those that are copyright intensive. As it is possible that the nature of arts occupations may be inherently more entrepreneurial and innovative, we compare arts majors to STEM and other creative majors also likely to work in such occupations. Using logistic regression, we find that majoring in a core arts field more than doubles an individual's likelihood of working in an entrepreneurial occupation or an innovative industry relative to non-creative majors. Other creative majors, like communications and STEM majors, are also associated with an increased likelihood of working as entrepreneurs or innovators. Relative to STEM and other creative majors, majoring in a core arts field is associated with the greatest increase in the likelihood of working in an entrepreneurial occupation and third greatest increase in the likelihood of working in an innovative industry. While arts graduates play an important role in artistic creation, this paper highlights a role for these graduates as entrepreneurs and innovators in the US economy.
Starting in 2006, the National Basketball Association (NBA) set a minimum age requirement on players declaring for the draft. Consequently, elite high school players typically spend at least 1 year playing college basketball before entering the draft. This paper seeks to test for the impact of years spent in college and peer quality on NBA performance. Additional years in college are found to have an insignificant impact on persistence in the NBA at various points post draft, a positive impact on early career performance, and a negative impact on midcareer performance, while peer quality does not have a significant impact on performance.
Recently there has been an emphasis on how time spent outside of the classroom can affect student outcomes, including high school graduation, with the hope of closing academic achievement gaps along socioeconomic and racial lines. This paper provides experimental evidence regarding a particular type of out-of-school activity—early work experience—on high school academic outcomes for low-income inner-city youth. Using randomized admissions lotteries for students who applied to the Boston Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), we estimate the effect of being selected to participate on academic outcomes as measured by administrative school records. We find that SYEP lottery winners are 4.4 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school on time and 2.5 percentage points less likely to drop out of high school during the four years after participating in the program relative to the control group. These improvements appear to be driven by better attendance and course performance in the year after being selected for the program, with the program's impact on attendance persisting into the second year. Survey data suggest that the Boston SYEP may affect academic outcomes by increasing aspirations to attend college, gaining basic work habits, and improving social skills during the summer.
This paper uses Major League Baseball data to examine the relationship between years remaining on player contracts and player performance. There is a potential for moral hazard to arise in this principal–agent relationship as the player may choose a less than optimal level of effort from the perspective of team management when the player has many guaranteed years remaining. A player fixed-effects estimation strategy, which finds a significant negative relationship between years remaining and performance, is employed. The primary contribution of this work is to show that this relationship is due to shirking. Alternative explanations for this relationship, such as teams signing improving players to multiyear contracts or players facing an adjustment process when joining a new team, are addressed. Additional evidence which is consistent with shirking behavior shows that shirking occurs on offense, not defense, and for position players, not pitchers.
This study uses American Community Survey data to examine the impact of the Great Recession on college graduates majoring in the arts. Arts graduates play important roles in an economy, through both artistic creation and in careers outside of the arts. While the Great Recession took a significant toll on the US economy generally, arts majors faced additional vulnerabilities as industries that rely on discretionary spending, like the arts and entertainment, are especially hard hit in times of economic downturn. This paper assesses the impact of graduating during or shortly after the recession relative to graduating shortly before this period on educational choices, including choice of major, double majoring, and completing an advanced degree, and career outcomes, including employment status, type of employment, hours worked, and earnings, for college graduates majoring in the arts. Graduating before or after the recession is found to have a negative impact on the share of graduates majoring in traditional arts fields, but a positive impact on the share majoring in related creative fields. Using a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, relative to non-art college graduates, traditional arts majors graduating during or after the Great Recession are more likely to complete a double major, be self-employed, be unemployed, work longer hours, and earn less income than those graduating prior to the recession. These impacts are likely to have a negative effect on the pipeline of college-educated artists working in the arts into the future.
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