Publication Type

Master Thesis

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

5-2026

Abstract

An unresolved background risk makes people more averse to other, independent  risks—most of all when a high-stakes, irreversible choice must be made under that risk. College major choice is such a setting. In China, students are admitted directly into a major they cannot easily change, and in the early 2000s they had to commit before learning their exam scores, bearing a field’s academic risk on top of an unresolved admission risk. Because STEM fields carry more academic risk and women are on average more risk-averse, this burden falls hardest on women’s entry into STEM. Exploiting a reform that moved application from before to after the exam, staggered across provinces between 1999 and 2003, we find that resolving admission uncertainty raised women’s STEM enrollment, relative to men’s, by about seven percentage points—roughly a third of the gender gap. Two patterns favor this mechanism over alternatives: the inflow concentrates in precisely the fields carrying the most academic risk; and the effect is flat across the score distribution, no stronger when students knew their exact rather than estimated scores, and still present in 2003 when offline in-person advising was suspended—evidence against confidence- and consulting-based explanations. A gender-neutral procedure thus produces a gendered outcome: what looks like stable preference is in part a response to the risk environment in which the choice is made.

Keywords

Background Risk, Major Choice, Labor Economics.

Degree Awarded

Master of Philosophy in Econ

Discipline

Economics | Labor Economics

Supervisor(s)

ZHANG, Xuan

First Page

1

Last Page

55

Publisher

Singapore Management University

City or Country

Singapore

Copyright Owner and License

Author

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