Learning about Oneself: The Effects of Performance Feedback on School Choice

Matteo Bobba and Veronica Frisancho

No 10360, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We design and implement a field experiment that provides students from less advantaged backgrounds with individualized feedback on academic performance during the transition from middle to high school. The intervention reduces the gap between expected and actual performance, as well as shrinks the variance of the individual belief distributions. Guided by a simple Bayesian model, we empirically document the interplay between variance reductions and mean changes of beliefs about students' own academic ability in shaping curricular choices. The shift in revealed preferences over high school tracks enabled by the intervention affects schooling trajectories, with better performing students being assigned into more academically oriented options.

Keywords: biased beliefs; Bayesian updating; information; school choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 I21 I24 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-edu, nep-hrm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10360.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Learning about Oneself: The Effects of Performance Feedback on School Choice (2017)
Working Paper: Learning about Oneself: The Effects of Performance Feedback on School Choice (2016)
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:iza:izadps:dp10360

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().