Peer Effects in the Workplace

Thomas Cornelissen (), Christian Dustmann and Uta Schönberg
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Uta Schoenberg

American Economic Review, 2017, vol. 107, issue 2, 425-56

Abstract: Existing evidence on peer effects in the productivity of coworkers stems from either laboratory experiments or real-world studies referring to a specific firm or occupation. In this paper, we aim at providing more generalizable results by investigating a large local labor market, with a focus on peer effects in wages rather than productivity. Our estimation strategy--which links the average permanent productivity of workers' peers to their wages--circumvents the reflection problem and accounts for endogenous sorting of workers into peer groups and firms. On average over all occupations, and in the type of high-skilled occupations investigated in studies on knowledge spillover, we find only small peer effects in wages. In the type of low-skilled occupations analyzed in extant studies on social pressure, in contrast, we find larger peer effects, about one-half the size of those identified in similar studies on productivity.

JEL-codes: J24 J31 J41 M12 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20141300
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (104)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Peer Effects in the Workplace (2013)
Working Paper: Peer Effects in the Workplace (2013)
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