Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College

Benjamin Elsner (), Ingo E. Isphording () and Ulf Zölitz
Additional contact information
Ingo E. Isphording: IZA

No 14320, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper studies how a student's ordinal rank in a peer group affects performance and specialisation choices in university. By exploiting data with repeated random assignment of students to teaching sections, we find that a higher rank increases performance and the probability of choosing related follow-up courses and majors. We document two types of dynamic effects. First, earlier ranks are less important than later ranks. Second, responses to rank changes are asymmetric: improvements in rank raise performance, while decreases in rank have no effect. Rank effects partially operate through students' expectations about future grades.

Keywords: higher education; social comparisons; rank; peer effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J16 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2021-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2021, 640 (131), 3182 - 3206.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14320.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement Rank Affects Performance and Major Choices in College (2021)
Working Paper: Achievement rank affects performance and major choices in college (2018)
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:dp14320

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 ().