Self-Selection of Peers and Performance

Lukas Kiessling (), Jonas Radbruch () and Sebastian Schaube ()
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Lukas Kiessling: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, 53113 Bonn, Germany
Jonas Radbruch: Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), 53113 Bonn, Germany
Sebastian Schaube: Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, 11019 Berlin, Germany

Management Science, 2022, vol. 68, issue 11, 8184-8201

Abstract: This paper studies how the presence of peers and different peer assignment rules—self-selection versus random assignment—affect individual performance. Using a framed field experiment, we find that the presence of a randomly assigned peer improves performance by 28% of a standard deviation (SD), whereas self-selecting peers induces an additional 15%–18% SD improvement in performance. Our results document peer effects in multiple characteristics and show that self-selection changes these characteristics. However, a decomposition reveals that variations in the peer composition contribute only little to the performance differences across peer assignment rules. Rather, we find that self-selection has a direct effect on performance.

Keywords: peer effects; self-selection; autonomy; framed field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:68:y:2022:i:11:p:8184-8201

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