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Peer group effects on the academic performance of Italian students

Author Info

  • Maria De Paola
  • Vincenzo Scoppa

Abstract

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 data set, 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 assignment 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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File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840701765478
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Article provided by Taylor & Francis Journals in its journal Applied Economics.

Volume (Year): 42 (2010)
Issue (Month): 17 ()
Pages: 2203-2215

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Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:42:y:2010:i:17:p:2203-2215
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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
  • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification
  • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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  1. Andreas Ammermueller & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2006. "Peer Effects in European Primary Schools: Evidence from PIRLS," NBER Working Papers 12180, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Weili Ding & Steven F. Lehrer, 2007. "Do Peers Affect Student Achievement in China's Secondary Schools?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(2), pages 300-312, May.
  3. Arcidiacono, Peter & Nicholson, Sean, 2005. "Peer effects in medical school," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 327-350, February.
  4. Epple, Dennis & Romano, Richard E, 1998. "Competition between Private and Public Schools, Vouchers, and Peer-Group Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 33-62, March.
  5. Patrick Bayer & Randi Hjalmarsson & David Pozen, 2009. "Building Criminal Capital behind Bars: Peer Effects in Juvenile Corrections," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 124(1), pages 105-147.
  6. Evans, William N & Oates, Wallace E & Schwab, Robert M, 1992. "Measuring Peer Group Effects: A Study of Teenage Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 966-91, October.
  7. Michael Kremer & Edward Miguel & Rebecca Thornton, 2004. "Incentives to Learn," NBER Working Papers 10971, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Pietro Garibaldi & Francesco Giavazzi & Andrea Ichino & Enrico Rettore, 2007. "College Cost and Time to Complete a Degree: Evidence from Tuition Discontinuities," NBER Working Papers 12863, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. 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.
  10. Angrist, Joshua & Lang, Kevin, 2004. "Does School Integration Generate Peer Effects? Evidence from Boston's Metco Program," IZA Discussion Papers 976, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  11. Caroline Hoxby, 2000. "Peer Effects in the Classroom: Learning from Gender and Race Variation," NBER Working Papers 7867, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  12. Anne C. Case & Lawrence F. Katz, 1991. "The Company You Keep: The Effects of Family and Neighborhood on Disadvantaged Youths," NBER Working Papers 3705, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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  14. V. Vandenberghe, 2002. "Evaluating the magnitude and the stakes of peer effects analysing science and math achievement across OECD," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(10), pages 1283-1290.
  15. De Giorgi, Giacomo & Pellizzari, Michele & Redaelli, Silvia, 2007. "Be as Careful of the Books You Read as of the Company You Keep: Evidence on Peer Effects in Educational Choices," IZA Discussion Papers 2833, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  16. 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.
  17. Zimmerman, David J., 1999. "Peer Effects in Academic Outcomes: Evidence From a Natural Experiment," Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education DP-52, Department of Economics, Williams College.
  18. Eric A. Hanushek & John F. Kain & Jacob M. Markman & Steven G. Rivkin, 2001. "Does Peer Ability Affect Student Achievement?," NBER Working Papers 8502, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  19. Costrell, Robert M, 1994. "A Simple Model of Educational Standards," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 956-71, September.
  20. Moulton, Brent R, 1990. "An Illustration of a Pitfall in Estimating the Effects of Aggregate Variables on Micro Unit," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 334-38, May.
  21. Ron W Zimmer & Eugenia F Toma, 2000. "Peer effects in private and public schools across countries," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(1), pages 75-92.
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Cited by:

  1. Androushchak, Gregory & Poldin, Oleg & Yudkevich, Maria, 2012. "Peer effects in exogenously formed student groups," Applied Econometrics, Publishing House "SINERGIA PRESS", vol. 26(2), pages 3-16.
  2. By Vincenzo Carrieri & Marcello D’Amato & Roberto Zotti, 2015. "On the causal effects of selective admission policies on students’ performances: evidence from a quasi-experiment in a large Italian university," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 67(4), pages 1034-1056.
  3. Bigoni, Maria & Fort, Margherita & Nardotto, Mattia & Reggiani, Tommaso, 2011. "Teams or Tournaments? A Field Experiment on Cooperation and Competition among University Students," IZA Discussion Papers 5844, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  4. Gregory Androushchak & Oleg Poldin & Maria Yudkevich, 2012. "Peer Effects in Exogenously Formed University Student Groups," HSE Working papers WP BRP 03/EDU/2012, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
  5. 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.
  6. Ficano, Carlena Cochi, 2012. "Peer effects in college academic outcomes – Gender matters!," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 1102-1115.
  7. Luigi Benfratello & Giuseppe Sorrenti & Gilberto Turati, 2013. "Tracking in the Tracks Understanding Inequality Patterns in the Italian Public Schooling System," CHILD Working Papers Series 19, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
  8. Antonio Di Paolo, 2010. "School Composition Effects in Spain," Working Papers XREAP2010-13, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Dec 2010.
  9. Louis N. Christofides & Michael Hoy & Joniada Milla & Thanasis Stengos, 2012. "The Implication of Peer and Parental Influences on University Attendance: A Gender Comparison," Working Papers 1201, University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance.
  10. Abdulmumini Baba Alfa & Abdulmumini Baba Alfa & Mohd Zaini Abd Karim, 2016. "Student Enthusiasm as a Key Determinant of their Performance," International Review of Management and Marketing, Econjournals, vol. 6(2), pages 237-245.
  11. 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.
  12. CESI, Berardino & PAOLINI, dimitri, 2012. "Peer group and distance: when widening university participation is better," CORE Discussion Papers 2012042, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
  13. M. Bigoni & M. Fort & M. Nardotto & T. Reggiani, 2011. "Teams or Tournaments? A Field Experiment on Cooperation and Competition in Academic Achievement," Working Papers wp752, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
  14. Luigi Benfratello & Giuseppe Sorrenti & Gilberto Turati, 2015. "Tracking in the Tracks in the Italian Schooling: Inequality Patterns in an Urban Context," Working papers 030, Department of Economics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino.
  15. Antonio di Paolo & Alvaro Choi, 2014. "School Composition Effects in Spain: Accounting for Intercept and Slope Effects," Hacienda Pública Española, IEF, vol. 210(3), pages 57-83, September.
  16. Valeeva, Dilyara & Poldin, Oleg & Yudkevich, Maria, 2014. "Student’s social ties and the choice of specialization," Applied Econometrics, Publishing House "SINERGIA PRESS", vol. 34(2), pages 80-94.
  17. Lionel Perini, 2012. "Peer effects and school design: An analysis of efficiency and equity," IRENE Working Papers 12-01, IRENE Institute of Economic Research.

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