Friendship network in the classroom: Parents bias on peer effects

Fabio Landini, Natalia Montinari (), Paolo Pin and Marco Piovesan

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2016, vol. 129, issue C, 56-73

Abstract: We interview both parents and their children enrolled in six primary schools in the district of Treviso (Italy). We study the structural differences between the children network of friends reported by children and the one elicited asking their parents. We find that the parent-reported network has a bias that is consistent with the following explanation: parents expect peer effects on school achievement to be stronger than what they really are. Thus, parents of low-performing students report their children to be friends of high-performing students. Our numerical simulations indicate that when this bias is combined with a bias on how some children target friends, then there is a multiplier effect on the expected school achievement.

Keywords: Social networks; Primary school; Friendships; Parents’ bias; Homophily; Peer effects; Bonacich centrality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D85 I21 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726811630097X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Friendship Network in the Classroom: Parents Bias and Peer Effects (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:129:y:2016:i:c:p:56-73

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.05.018

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().