IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v54y2016icp62-78.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Good peers or good teachers? Evidence from a French University

Author

Listed:
  • Brodaty, Thibault
  • Gurgand, Marc

Abstract

Using a quasi-random allocation of students to classes in a French university, we are able to estimate peer effects and teacher effects, with a specific attention to non-linear peer effects. We find that teacher effects are strong, as found at other levels of the education system, but that peer effects have very limited impact. This implies that restricting student access to some universities is of no benefit to remaining students in terms of academic performance. In contrast, attention to teacher performance should be strong at the higher education level.

Suggested Citation

  • Brodaty, Thibault & Gurgand, Marc, 2016. "Good peers or good teachers? Evidence from a French University," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 62-78.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:54:y:2016:i:c:p:62-78
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.06.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775715300091
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angrist, Joshua D., 2014. "The perils of peer effects," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 98-108.
    2. Steven G. Rivkin & Eric A. Hanushek & John F. Kain, 2005. "Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(2), pages 417-458, March.
    3. Gordon Winston & David Zimmerman, 2004. "Peer Effects in Higher Education," NBER Chapters, in: College Choices: The Economics of Where to Go, When to Go, and How to Pay For It, pages 395-424, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Jesse Rothstein, 2010. "Teacher Quality in Educational Production: Tracking, Decay, and Student Achievement," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 125(1), pages 175-214.
    5. David J. Zimmerman, 2003. "Peer Effects in Academic Outcomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(1), pages 9-23, February.
    6. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    7. Scott E. Carrell & Richard L. Fullerton & James E. West, 2009. "Does Your Cohort Matter? Measuring Peer Effects in College Achievement," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(3), pages 439-464, July.
    8. Bruce Sacerdote, 2001. "Peer Effects with Random Assignment: Results for Dartmouth Roommates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 116(2), pages 681-704.
    9. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren, 2008. "Can Principals Identify Effective Teachers? Evidence on Subjective Performance Evaluation in Education," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(1), pages 101-136.
    10. Michela Braga & Marco Paccagnella & Michele Pellizzari, 2014. "The academic and labor market returns of university professors," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 981, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    11. Giacomo De Giorgi & Michele Pellizzari & Silvia Redaelli, 2010. "Identification of Social Interactions through Partially Overlapping Peer Groups," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 241-275, April.
    12. Florian Hoffmann & Philip Oreopoulos, 2009. "Professor Qualities and Student Achievement," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 83-92, February.
    13. Stinebrickner, Ralph & Stinebrickner, Todd R., 2006. "What can be learned about peer effects using college roommates? Evidence from new survey data and students from disadvantaged backgrounds," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(8-9), pages 1435-1454, September.
    14. Peter Arcidiacono & Gigi Foster & Natalie Goodpaster & Josh Kinsler, 2012. "Estimating spillovers using panel data, with an application to the classroom," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 3(3), pages 421-470, November.
    15. Scott E. Carrell & Bruce I. Sacerdote & James E. West, 2013. "From Natural Variation to Optimal Policy? The Importance of Endogenous Peer Group Formation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(3), pages 855-882, May.
    16. Bruce Sacerdote, 2014. "Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Analysis of Peer Effects: Two Steps Forward?," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 253-272, August.
    17. Michael Kremer & Dan Levy, 2008. "Peer Effects and Alcohol Use among College Students," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(3), pages 189-206, Summer.
    18. Foster, Gigi, 2006. "It's not your peers, and it's not your friends: Some progress toward understanding the educational peer effect mechanism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(8-9), pages 1455-1475, September.
    19. Scott E. Carrell & James E. West, 2010. "Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(3), pages 409-432, June.
    20. Thibault Brodaty, 2010. "Les effets de Pairs dans l'Éducation : une Revue de Littérature," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 120(5), pages 739-757.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Humlum, Maria Knoth & Thorsager, Mette, 2021. "The Importance of Peer Quality for Completion of Higher Education," IZA Discussion Papers 14136, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Martin Fischer & Ulf-Göram Gerdtham, & Gawain Heckley & Martin Karlsson & Gustav Kjellsson & Therese Nilsson, 2019. "Education and Health: Long-run Effects of Peers, Tracking and Years," CINCH Working Paper Series 1906, Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, Competent in Competition and Health.
    3. Tian, Zhilei & Wei, Yi & Li, Fang, 2019. "Who are better teachers? The effects of tenure-track and part-time faculty on student achievement," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 140-151.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matias Berthelon & Eric Bettinger & Diana I. Kruger & Alejandro Montecinos-Pearce, 2019. "The Structure of Peers: The Impact of Peer Networks on Academic Achievement," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 60(7), pages 931-959, November.
    2. Silvia Mendolia & Alfredo R Paloyo & Ian Walker, 2018. "Heterogeneous effects of high school peers on educational outcomes," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(3), pages 613-634.
    3. Brady, Ryan R. & Insler, Michael A. & Rahman, Ahmed S., 2017. "Bad Company: Understanding negative peer effects in college achievement," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 144-168.
    4. Frijters, Paul & Islam, Asad & Pakrashi, Debayan, 2019. "Heterogeneity in peer effects in random dormitory assignment in a developing country," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 117-134.
    5. Oleg Poldin & Diliara Valeeva & Maria Yudkevich, 2016. "Which Peers Matter: How Social Ties Affect Peer-group Effects," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 57(4), pages 448-468, June.
    6. Fischer, Stefanie, 2017. "The downside of good peers: How classroom composition differentially affects men's and women's STEM persistence," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 211-226.
    7. de Gendre, Alexandra & Salamanca, Nicolás, 2020. "On the Mechanisms of Ability Peer Effects," IZA Discussion Papers 13938, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Ingo E. Isphording & Ulf Zölitz, 2020. "The value of a peer," ECON - Working Papers 342, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    9. Dennis Epple & Richard Romano & Sinan Sarpça & Holger Sieg & Melanie Zaber, 2019. "Market power and price discrimination in the US market for higher education," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 50(1), pages 201-225, March.
    10. Epple, Dennis & Romano, Richard & Sarpça, Sinan & Sieg, Holger, 2017. "A general equilibrium analysis of state and private colleges and access to higher education in the U.S," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 164-178.
    11. Carrell, Scott E. & Hoekstra, Mark & West, James E., 2011. "Is poor fitness contagious?: Evidence from randomly assigned friends," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 657-663, August.
    12. Antecol, Heather & Eren, Ozkan & Ozbeklik, Serkan, 2013. "Peer Effects in Disadvantaged Primary Schools: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 7694, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Richard Murphy & Felix Weinhardt, 2014. "Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank," CESifo Working Paper Series 4815, CESifo.
    14. Ozkan Eren, 2017. "Differential Peer Effects, Student Achievement, and Student Absenteeism: Evidence From a Large-Scale Randomized Experiment," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(2), pages 745-773, April.
    15. Dennis Epple & Richard Romano & Sinan Sarpça & Holger Sieg, 2013. "The U.S. Market for Higher Education: A General Equilibrium Analysis of State and Private Colleges and Public Funding Policies," NBER Working Papers 19298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Giorgio Brunello & Maria De Paola & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2010. "Peer Effects In Higher Education: Does The Field Of Study Matter?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(3), pages 621-634, July.
    17. Balsa, Ana & Gandelman, Néstor & Roldán, Flavia, 2018. "Peer and parental influence in academic performance and alcohol use," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 41-55.
    18. Liang Zhang & Shi Pu, 2017. "It takes two shining lights to brighten the room: peer effects with random roommate assignments," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(1), pages 3-21, January.
    19. Scott E. Carrell & Richard L. Fullerton & James E. West, 2009. "Does Your Cohort Matter? Measuring Peer Effects in College Achievement," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(3), pages 439-464, July.
    20. Oleg V. Poldin & Tania P. Simoes & Marcelo Knobel & Maria M. Yudkevich, 2015. "Estimation of Peer Effects with Predicted Social Ties: Evidence from Two Universities in Brazil and Russia," HSE Working papers WP BRP 30/EDU/2015, National Research University Higher School of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Higher education; Peer effects; Teacher effects; Random assignement;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:54:y:2016:i:c:p:62-78. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Nithya Sathishkumar). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.