We analyse peer effects among students of a middle-sized Italian public university. We explain students’ average grade in exams passed during their Second Level Degree course on the basis of their pre-determined measures of abilities, personal characteristics and peer group abilities. Thanks to a rich administrative dataset, we are able to build a variety of definitions of peer groups, describing different kinds of students’ interaction, based on classes attended together or exams taken in the same session. Self-selection problems are handled through Two-Stage Least Squares estimations using as an instrument, the exogenous assigning of students to different teaching classes in the compulsory courses attended during their First Level Degree course. We find statistically significant positive peer group effects, which are robust to the different definitions of peer group and to different measures of abilities.
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
18428.
Find related papers by JEL classification: I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks Economic Anthropology J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
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Michael Kremer & Edward Miguel & Rebecca Thornton, 2004.
"Incentives to Learn,"
NBER Working Papers
10971, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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