No evidence of direct peer influence in upper-secondary track choice—Evidence from Hungary

Tamás Keller ()
Additional contact information
Tamás Keller: Computational Social Science - Research Center for Educational and Network Studies, Centre for Social Sciences, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies

No 2218, CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS from Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies

Abstract: This paper investigates direct peer influence in upper-secondary track choice in the stratified and selective Hungarian educational system and makes two contributions to the literature. First, it tests both peer-contrasting and peer-conforming influences by considering peers’ GPA and endogenous educational choices. Second, the paper investigates mechanisms behind peer-conforming educational choices (such as peers’ normative pressure and information potential), with a focus on two structurally different peer relationships: self-selected friends and randomly assigned deskmates. The study uses a unique dataset that merges administrative data with randomized field experiment data. The results show no evidence of peer influence, after accounting for unobserved classroom homogeneity. Within the classroom, peers’ ability did not decrease, and peers’ ambitious endogenous educational choices did not increase students’ own choice of the academic upper-secondary track. Concerning the mechanisms of peer-conforming educational choices, the results reveal that peers’ informational potential (but not their normative pressure) might be the mechanism that drives students to conform to peers’ choices. This paper interprets the absence of peer influence in upper-secondary track choices as evidence that peer influence cannot derail students’ socially determined educational choices.

Keywords: upper-secondary track choice; peer influence; application behavior; social contrast and conformity; deskmates; educational choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I21 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-net and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://kti.krtk.hu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CERSIEWP202218.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:has:discpr:2218

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS from Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nora Horvath ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).