Top of the class: the importance of ordinal rank

Richard Murphy and Felix Weinhardt ()

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This article establishes a new fact about educational production: ordinal academic rank during primary school has lasting impacts on secondary school achievement that are independent of underlying ability. Using data on the universe of English school students, we exploit naturally occurring differences in achievement distributions across primary school classes to estimate the impact of class rank. We find large effects on test scores, confidence, and subject choice during secondary school, even though these students have a new set of peers and teachers who are unaware of the students’ prior ranking in primary school. The effects are especially pronounced for boys, contributing to an observed gender gap in the number of Maths courses chosen at the end of secondary school. Using a basic model of student effort allocation across subjects, we distinguish between learning and non-cognitive skills mechanisms, finding support for the latter.

Keywords: rank; cognitive skills; peer effects; productivity; UKRI fund; OUP prepayment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2020-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eff and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (57)

Published in The Review of Economic Studies, 1, November, 2020, 87(6), pp. 2777 - 2826. ISSN: 0034-6527

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105077/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank (2020)
Journal Article: Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank (2020)
Working Paper: Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank (2019)
Working Paper: Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank (2018)
Working Paper: Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank (2016)
Working Paper: Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:105077

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