Self-Selection of Peers and Performance

This paper studies how the presence of peers and different peer assignment rules—self-selection versus random assignment—affect individual performance. Using a framed field experiment, we find that the presence of a randomly assigned peer improves performance by 28% of a standard deviation (SD), whereas self-selecting peers induces an additional 15%–18% SD improvement in performance. Our results document peer effects in multiple characteristics and show that self-selection changes these characteristics. However, a decomposition reveals that variations in the peer composition contribute only little to the performance differences across peer assignment rules. Rather, we find that self-selection has a direct effect on performance. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.

Regional Peer Effects of Corporate Tax Avoidance

This study empirically demonstrates significant regional peer effects due to tax avoidance. We used peer companies’ idiosyncratic stock returns as an instrumental variable to address potential endogeneity problems. The heterogeneity analysis indicates that for companies with a stronger intensity of regional tax collection and management, a higher degree of informatization, and companies with a low management shareholding ratio, the regional peer effects of enterprise tax avoidance are more significant. Finally, we determined that the managers’ information learning, reputation consideration, and information communication are key mechanisms propagating peer effects. The conclusions of this paper enrich and expand the peer effect theory of corporate tax avoidance, thereby providing a theoretical basis and empirical evidence for tax authorities in supervising corporate tax avoidance.

The Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS) as a resource for investigating neighbourhood peer effects: A case study using natural experiment(s) in fertility and labour market participation

Our neighbours can potentially influence our behaviour. For instance, poor health behaviours amongst neighbours may normalise and reinforce our poor health behaviours. This is an example of a peer effect. Imitative behaviour can cause small initial changes in individual behaviour to spread amongst their social networks and result in a social multiplier effect. Understanding the size and mechanisms behind the social multiplier effect allows for more effective health interventions. It also helps us understand why persistent health inequalities exist across different neighbourhoods and social groups.In an ideal experiment, we would randomly allocate people into treatment and control groups and change the behaviours of persons A in the treatment group (directly or through incentives). Then we would observe the effects of changes in person A's behaviour on their neighbour person B. This ideal experiment is practically and (possibly) ethically unfeasible. Furthermore, data on a large enough sample of people and their neighbours is very expensive to collect.Instead of a normal experiment, we can use natural experiments which change person A's behaviour. In this paper, we use a well-known natural experiment that affects women's fertility and, indirectly, their labour market participation. Furthermore, data on people and their neighbours are available from the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS).The Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS) is a longitudinal study consisting of 28% of the NI census and roughly 50% of all households. The NILS is linked to a database of all addressable properties in NI which include the coordinates of residences. In theory, NILS contains a large sample of households in NI and their close neighbours that can be used for studying peer effects.This project is a proof of concept for studying peer effects using NILS. If any random intervention exists (e.g. natural, quasi- or actual randomised trial) then NILS can always be used to study peer effects (amongst neighbours). This is significant because peer effects are notoriously hard to study due data limitations and a large number of credible natural experiments exist in health research. This project's contribution is the discovery that NILS almost uniquely placed as resource for studying peer effects in the UK.

Peer Effects on First-Year University Students’ Results: The Role of Classmates’ Academic Performance and Socioeconomic Status

Peer effects in the context of higher education have lately received increased attention. Higher diversity in the composition of new cohorts of students, generated mainly in countries where public and institutional policies have enabled access to students from low socioeconomic conditions and races who unusually attend postsecondary education, make these effects even more relevant. This research estimates and analyzes the effect of peers’ academic performance and course composition by socioeconomic origin on students’ academic achievement at a private Colombian university between 2008 and 2019. The estimates, by Ordinary Least Squares and Multilevel models, support the existence of significant peer effects. There was a positive effect of peers’ performance on Calculus I academic results, principally of medium and high-performance peers, and a null effect of the socioeconomic level in Calculus I, but a significant effect in Communication Skills I, although with a limited impact. By introducing heterogeneities, it is evident that students perceived a greater benefit from performance improvements from peers who are in the same performance category or socioeconomic level. These results provide evidence of the existence, direction, and magnitude of peer effects in Colombian higher education. Additionally, they suggest that the most relevant characteristic of classmates is their academic performance and not their socioeconomic origin.