Valid assessment of university students’ economic knowledge has become an increasingly important research area within and across countries. Particularly the effects of prior education, native language, and gender on students’ economic knowledge have been discussed for a long time. However, most available findings refer only to results within countries and focus on graduates or students at various stages of their studies. In this presentation, we analyze the level of economic knowledge of beginning students in higher education and compare the effects of prior economic education, gender, and native language between Germany, Japan, and the United States. To this end, we used the fourth edition of the Test of Understanding in College Economics (TUCE), developed by the Council for Economic Education. The TUCE is an international test instrument comprising 60 multiple-choice items in micro and macroeconomics that has been validated and used in various countries on a national level to assess the economic knowledge of students in higher education. The TUCE also was adapted and comprehensively validated for Germany following the Test Adaptation Guidelines (International Test Commission, 2005) and the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association & National Council on Measurement in Education 2004, 2014). Japan followed the same adaptation approach. The curricular structures of undergraduate programs in economics as well as the assessed samples (N_Ger=1,629; N_Jap=1,188; N_US=11,059) were found to be comparable across the three countries. When we analyzed microeconomics and macroeconomics separately, we found that prior economic education had a significant positive effect on the microeconomics test scores and gender and native language had a significant effect on the macroeconomics test scores in the three countries. We discuss possible explanations for these findings with reference to the findings from the adaptation and validation process.