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Social policy gone bad educationally: Unintended peer effects from transferred students

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  • Genakos, Christos
  • Kyrkopoulou, Eleni

Abstract

What is the impact of an increase of lower-ability students in a university class? We examine a natural experiment in which students from large, low-income families had the chance to transfer to academic programs at a local university. Multiple law changes meant that there was significant, quasi-random variability in the number of transferred students over time, which was orthogonal to the quality of receiving students. We create a novel dataset for the top economics department in Greece and show that the social policy had a negative educational impact by uniformly lowering recipient students' academic performance once the proportion of transferred students exceeded a certain threshold.

Suggested Citation

  • Genakos, Christos & Kyrkopoulou, Eleni, 2026. "Social policy gone bad educationally: Unintended peer effects from transferred students," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 398-428.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jpolmo:v:48:y:2026:i:2:p:398-428
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jpolmod.2026.01.003
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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education

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