An Olympic opportunity

Christos Genakos, Eleni Kyrkopoulou and Elias Papaioannou

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: We use a unique natural experiment in which families were randomly selected to live in the Olympic Village, constructed for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, to assess the impact of improved neighbourhood conditions on academic achievement. Comparing 12-17-year-old students who relocated and attended the new schools with non-selected applicants from the same origin schools across Attica, we find a positive, gender-neutral, and significant effect of moving on overall performance. Educational gains, primarily in language courses, are concentrated among students who previously performed poorly, indicating a "fresh start" effect.

Keywords: social experiment; housing; neighborhoods; neighbourhoods; peer effects; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04-30
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp2175.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:cep:cepdps:dp2175

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().