The Lasting Effects of Introductory Economics Courses

Abstract

The so-called Stigler hypothesis suggested that students who have taken a conventional one-year economics course and those who have never had such a course, probably show little difference in test performance five years after completing college. This report is one of the more systematic efforts to test the validity of the Stigler hypothesis. Although it might be argued that Saunders did not directly address the challenge as put forth by Stigler, the results show that students do retain some of their knowledge of economics five years after graduation from college. The report also considers several variables related to retention and discusses methodological problems pertaining to this type of research.