samlet årgang - Økonomisk Institut - Københavns Universitet

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NATIONALØKONOMISK TIDSSKRIFT 2005. NR. 3
given, 7 and in avoiding these ambiguities, we have decided to abstract from group
exams and focus on individual written exams. In this sense, we are linking admission
characteristics to performance that does not capture learning externalities (as these
may be represented in group work). 8
Before we proceed we should note that our analysis is not unique in the literature.
First of all there exists an elaborative literature on these issues in international journals
– see, e.g. the study by Naylor and Smith (2004) for universities in the UK and their
references within. Clearly such an aggregation among universities introduces some
noise to the data, a problem that is avoided in, e.g., Tay (1994) who looks at performance
and admission characteristics of a particular program in Singapore. For the case
of Denmark we are only aware of two other studies that ask questions similar to ours,
viz. Albæk (2001) and Andersen and Østergaard (2005). Albæk analyses the probability
of passing the first year of the economics programme at the University of Copenhagen.
As one possible explanatory factor Albæk uses high-school GPAs. The focus in his study
is the effects of the admission rules on the economics programme and on how the
probability of passing first year is affected by various background variables. His results
indicate that there is a significantly increased probability of passing first year for students
with mathematics at level A from high-school. In addition to this, the passing probability
also seems to increase for students who have spent a couple of years doing other
things other than university studies before they begin the course. Both of these findings
are supported by the study by Andersen and Østergaard (op.cit). 9
2. Description of the data
As mentioned above, the data have been collected for students who started the B.Sc.
IB in 2002 and 2003, as these are the years where admission characteristics data have
been systematically registered. CBS’s central student register (HSAS) provided the data
on grades from individual written exams with the latest entry being August 2004. These
data are confidential, as they are constructed on the basis of the individual civil
7. The main question here is: »Has the student earned the grade as a result, or in spite, of the abilities of the
other group members?«
8. One should note, however, that many students prepare their individual written exams together with other
students, and thus some form of learning externality cannot be precluded.
9. Focusing on performance is also the topic in Lorentzen (2001) and Gabrielsen (1996a,b). The former
paper analyses the background factors that leads to a good student performance at the English-language
masters programmes at CBS. The latter papers investigate whether there is a »teacher effect« on the grades
in the statistics course at CBS’ HD programme. While the latter paper does not examine the influence of
admission characteristics (the focus of our paper), the former paper looks only at Bachelor GPA and country
of origin as admission characteristics.