Logo
Munich Personal RePEc Archive

Social Interactions Through Space and Time: Evidence from College Enrollment and Academic Mobility

Goulas, Sofoklis and Megalokonomou, Rigissa (2015): Social Interactions Through Space and Time: Evidence from College Enrollment and Academic Mobility.

[thumbnail of MPRA_paper_65882.pdf]
Preview
PDF
MPRA_paper_65882.pdf

Download (478kB) | Preview

Abstract

In the recent years, the importance of one's group of peers-be that friends, colleagues, neighbors- has been widely emphasized in the literature. In this paper, we ask whether individuals derive utility from conformity in college enrollment and academic mobility. We propose a new methodology in mitigating reflection and endogeneity issues in identifying social interactions. We exploit a special institutional setting, in which schools are very close to each other, allowing for students from different schools to interact. We investigate utility spillovers from the educational choices of students in consecutive cohorts. Spatial variation allows us to identify social interactions in groups of various sizes. Using a new dataset that spans the universe of high school graduates, we estimate general equilibrium effects of social interactions. We find positive and significant externalities in the decision to enrol in college and the decision to migrate to a different city among peers that belong to the same social group.

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact us: mpra@ub.uni-muenchen.de

This repository has been built using EPrints software.

MPRA is a RePEc service hosted by Logo of the University Library LMU Munich.