Peer Group Effects on the Academic Performance of Italian Students

Maria De Paola () and Vincenzo Scoppa ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We analyse peer effects among students of a middle-sized Italian public university. We explain students’ average grade in exams passed during their Second Level Degree course on the basis of their pre-determined measures of abilities, personal characteristics and peer group abilities. Thanks to a rich administrative dataset, we are able to build a variety of definitions of peer groups, describing different kinds of students’ interaction, based on classes attended together or exams taken in the same session. Self-selection problems are handled through Two-Stage Least Squares estimations using as an instrument, the exogenous assigning of students to different teaching classes in the compulsory courses attended during their First Level Degree course. We find statistically significant positive peer group effects, which are robust to the different definitions of peer group and to different measures of abilities.

Keywords: Peer effects; Student performance; Educational production function; instrumental variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Peer group effects on the academic performance of Italian students (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:18428

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