Relative Performance Feedback and Long-Term Tasks – Experimental Evidence from Higher Education

Raphael Brade (brade@ifo.de), Oliver Himmler and Robert Jaeckle (jaeckle@ifo.de)
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Robert Jäckle

No 10346, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We present first experimental evidence that relative performance feedback improves both the speed and quality with which challenging long-term tasks are completed. Providing university students with ongoing relative feedback on accumulated course credits accelerates graduation by 0.12 SD, and also improves grades by 0.063 SD. Treatment effects are concentrated among students with medium pre-treatment graduation probabilities: when these students are informed about an above-average performance, their outcomes improve – otherwise their outcomes deteriorate. Combined with survey evidence, this pattern of results suggests that learning about own ability is a plausible mechanism.

Keywords: relative performance feedback; rank; natural field experiment; higher education; perceived ability; belief updating (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D83 D91 I21 I23 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-mac and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10346

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