Peer Group Effects on the Academic Performance of Italian Students

De Paola, Maria and Scoppa, Vincenzo (2009): Peer Group Effects on the Academic Performance of Italian Students.

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 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.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Peer effects; Student performance; Educational production function; instrumental variables
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I21 - Analysis of Education; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology > Z13 - Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology ; Social and Economic Stratification; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J24 - Human Capital ; Skills ; Occupational Choice ; Labor Productivity

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