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Bad Company: Reconciling Negative Peer Effects in College Achievement

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  • Brady, Ryan
  • Insler, Michael
  • Rahman, Ahmed

Abstract

Existing peer effects studies produce contradictory findings, including positive, negative, large, and small effects, despite similar contexts. We reconcile these results using U.S. Naval Academy data covering a 22-year history of the random assignment of students to peer groups. Coupled with students' limited discretion over freshman-year courses, our setting affords an opportunity to better understand peer effects in different social networks. We find negative effects at the broader "company" level (students' social and residential group) and positive effects at the narrower course-company level. We suggest that peer spillovers change direction because of differences in the underlying mechanism of peer influence.

Suggested Citation

  • Brady, Ryan & Insler, Michael & Rahman, Ahmed, 2015. "Bad Company: Reconciling Negative Peer Effects in College Achievement," MPRA Paper 68354, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:68354
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Angela Granger-Serrano & Alexander Villarraga-Orjuela, 2021. "Peer Effects on First-Year University Students’ Results: The Role of Classmates’ Academic Performance and Socioeconomic Status," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(23), pages 1-26, December.
    2. Ana María Díaz & Ignacio Penagos, 2018. "It is not what you know but who you know: Heterogenous peer efects in education," Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad, Universidad de los Andes,Facultad de Economía, CEDE, vol. 80(2), pages 53-88, February.
    3. Michael A. Insler & Jimmy Karam, 2019. "Do Sports Crowd Out Books? The Impact of Intercollegiate Athletic Participation on Grades," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(1), pages 115-153, January.
    4. Phoebe Kotlikoff & Ahmed S. Rahman & Katherine A. Smith, 2022. "Minding the gap: academic outcomes from pre-college programs," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 3-28, January.
    5. Brady, Ryan R. & Insler, Michael A., 2019. "Order of play advantage in sequential tournaments: Evidence from randomized settings in professional golf," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 79-92.
    6. Min, Shi & Yuan, Zhouhang & Wang, Xiaobing & Hou, Lingling, 2019. "Do peer effects influence the academic performance of rural students at private migrant schools in China?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 418-433.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Peer effects; social network formation; academic achievement; homophily;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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