IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/col/000416/015306.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

It is not what you know but who you know: Heterogenous peer effects in education

Author

Listed:
  • Ana María Díaz- Ignacio Penagos
  • Ignacio Penagos

Abstract

This paper explores the presence of peer effects in education. We investigate whether and how education attainment depends on the educational attainment of peers. We consider the role of different types of relationships among peers on education outcomes using a detailed network structure among first-year economics students. We find that there are strong peer effects in education, but peers tend to be influential only if they interact frequently. This result suggest that the mechanism behind is that students teach their peers specific knowledge rather than general knowledge that they possess. We also find that peers can have a positive influence if they belong to the highest tercile of the distribution of the university entrance exam. While the influence can be negative if peers belong to the lowest decile of the distribution. This evidence suggest that the bad apple model and the shining light model can coexist.

Suggested Citation

  • Ana María Díaz- Ignacio Penagos & Ignacio Penagos, 2016. "It is not what you know but who you know: Heterogenous peer effects in education," Vniversitas Económica, Universidad Javeriana - Bogotá, vol. 0(0), pages 1-23, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:col:000416:015306
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://cea.javeriana.edu.co/investigacion-publicaciones/documentos-trabajo/vniversitas-economica
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Peer effects; social network formation; academic achievement; homophily;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:col:000416:015306. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mayerly Galindo Rodriguez (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.