Publicly available statistics on career earnings show that an economics degree pays far more on the job market than degrees in other social sciences. But it's not clear that those higher salaries reveal the true returns to studying the dismal science.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, authors Zachary Bleemer and Aashish Mehta identify the causal effects of choosing one major over another by analyzing the outcomes of a policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, that prevented students with low grades in introductory economics courses from declaring an economics major.

They found that studying economics boosted annual early-career wages by $22,000 compared to students' second-choice majors—a return roughly as large as enrolling in college in the first place.

Bleemer says that returns to a major can vary significantly from student to student and college to college. But the results highlight the importance of carefully evaluating information about career earnings when choosing a field of study.

He recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the earnings premium of an economics degree and the downsides of major restriction policies at universities.