Which factors determine academic performance of economics freshers? Some Spanish Evidence

This paper analyses the impact of several factors potentially affecting academic performance of first-year undergraduates (freshers) in Economics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid during 2002-2005. Outcomes are the grades obtained in three core subjects which differ substantially in their requirements of math skills. Our main finding is that those students who completed a technical track at high school tend to perform much better in math-intensive subjects than those who followed a social sciences track and that the latter do not perform better in subjects where prior training in economics is bound to be helpful.