INVESTIGATING THE EFFECT OF STUDENTS' PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAGILITIES ON CONTROL BELIEFS

Perceived control plays a major role in human capital investment. But little is known about its determinants while university students face mental health issues. This paper studies how control beliefs are impacted by psychological fragilities among French higher education students. Control beliefs are measured via the importance attributed to internal and external factors. Considering potential endogeneity, I implement an instrumental variable strategy using sunlight as instrumental variable. The strategy uncovers a positive effect of psychological fragilities on the importance attributed to internal factors and a negative effect on the importance attributed to external factors. I also explore whether the impact of psychological fragilities on control beliefs is a relevant channel to explain the impact of psychological fragilities on students' efforts and find no evidence for it.