Grading System and Student Effort

Valentina Paredes ()
Additional contact information
Valentina Paredes: Faculty of Economics and Business Universidad de Chile Santiago, Chile

Education Finance and Policy, 2017, vol. 12, issue 1, 107-128

Abstract: Several papers have proposed that the grading system affects students’ incentives to exert effort. In particular, the previous literature has compared student effort under relative and absolute grading systems, but the results are mixed and the implications of the models have not been empirically tested. In this paper, I build a model where students maximize their utility by choosing effort. I investigate how student effort changes when there is a change in the grading system from absolute grading to relative grading. I use a unique dataset from college students in Chile who faced a change in the grading system to test the implications of my model. My model predicts that, for low levels of uncertainty, low-ability students exert less effort with absolute grading, and high-ability students exert more effort with absolute grading. The data confirm that there is a change in the distribution of effort.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/EDFP_a_00195 (application/pdf)
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

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:tpr:edfpol:v:12:y:2017:i:1:p:107-128

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1557-3060

Access Statistics for this article

Education Finance and Policy is currently edited by Stephanie Riegg Cellini and Randall Reback

More articles in Education Finance and Policy from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().