Nuremberg Research Seminar in Economics on 3 December 2025, LG 0.423
You are invited to join the weekly Nuremberg Research Seminar in Economics on 3 December 2025, from 13.15 to 14.45 pm. The seminar will be held in room LG 0.423. Lea Cassar (University of Regensburg) will be talking about “MINTful Career Choices: The Impact of Parents and Peers on Students’ Occupational Aspirations”.
More information can be found here:
This paper tests for parental and peer influence as a driver of students’ occupational aspirations and an ultimate mechanism behind the gender gap in STEM occupations. To this end, we conduct a large-scale field experiment among 2,840 secondary school students in Germany, where we exogenously vary the visibility of students’ career plans to parents and peers. We find that visibility reinforces gender-stereotypical choices, with visibility to parents nearly doubling the STEM gender gap. Using a structural model, we show that this external influence from parents and peer dominates in early school grades (as early as sixth grade), while internalized beliefs about STEM occupations grow in importance later. Our findings highlight the need for early interventions that engage parents and account for peer dynamics.