Peer Effects in Higher Education: Does the Field of Study Matter?

Giorgio Brunello, Maria De Paola () and Vincenzo Scoppa ()

No 92, "Marco Fanno" Working Papers from Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno"

Abstract: Does the peer effect vary with the field of study? Using data from a middle-sized public university located in Southern Italy and exploiting the random assignment of first year students to college accommodation, we find that roommate peer effects for freshmen enrolled in the Hard Sciences are positive and significantly larger than for freshmen enrolled in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We present a simple theoretical model which suggests that the uncovered differences between fields in the size of the peer effect could plausibly be generated by between-field variation in labor market returns, which affect optimal student effort.

Keywords: peer effects; effort; fields of study; random assignment; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://economia.unipd.it/sites/economia.unipd.it/files/20090092.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: PEER EFFECTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: DOES THE FIELD OF STUDY MATTER? (2010)
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:pad:wpaper:0092

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in "Marco Fanno" Working Papers from Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno" Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Raffaele Dei Campielisi ().