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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Effects of prior economic education, native language, and gender on economic knowledge of first-year students in higher education. A comparative study between Germany and the USA

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The assessment of university students’ economic knowledge has become an increasingly important research area within and across countries. Particularly, the different influences of prior education, native language, and gender as some of the main prerequisites on students’ economic knowledge have been highlighted since long. However, the findings are often only available within countries and focus on students who are at different levels of their studies or graduates. To remedy this research deficit, the goal of our article is to analyze the status of economic knowledge of students at the beginning of their course of studies and compare the effects of prior economic education, gender, and native language between the USA and Germany. Therefore, we used a translated and adapted version of the fourth edition of the Council for Economic Education's Test of Understanding in College Economics (TUCE). The TUCE is an international measuring instrument that has been validated and widely been used in several countries...