Peer Effects in Microenvironments: The Benefits of Homogeneous Classroom Groups

Fangwen Lu and Michael Anderson

Journal of Labor Economics, 2015, vol. 33, issue 1, 91 - 122

Abstract: Many believe that classroom interactions play an important role in students' academic achievement, but there is little evidence on peer effects within subclassroom groups. We exploit random seat assignment in a Chinese middle school to estimate how the gender of neighboring students affects a student's academic achievement. We find that being surrounded by five females rather than five males increases a female's test scores by 0.2-0.3 standard deviations but has no significant effects on a male's test scores. These results suggest a low-cost way to potentially improve performance within the world's largest school system.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (49)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/677392 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/677392 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Peer Effects in Microenvironments: The Benefits of Homogeneous Classroom Groups (2015)
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:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/677392

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Labor Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().