We find an individual's rank within their reference group has effects on later objective outcomes. To evaluate the impact of local rank, we use a large administrative dataset tracking over two million students in England from primary through to secondary school. Academic rank within primary...

Boys may be better off not going to the school with high-performing peers, according to research by Richard Murphy and Felix Weinhardt, which explores how much impact there is on later confidence and exam results from where a child ranks in primary school. They find that being ranked in the top...

Peer effects arise in situations where workers observe each others’ work activity. In this paper we disentangle the effect of observing a peer from that of being observed by a peer, by setting up a real effort experiment in which we manipulate the observability of performance. In particular,...

This paper analyzes peer effects among university scientists. Specifically, it investigates whether the number of peers and their average quality affects the productivity of researchers in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. The usual endogeneity problems related to estimating peer effects are...

This paper examines the long-run impact of ordinal rank during primary school on productivity using comprehensive English administrative data. Identification is obtained from variation in test score distributions across cohorts and subjects, such that the same score relative to the class mean...

We incorporate the concept of social identity into a stylized model of occupational choice and analyze whether an individual’s identity affects his or her decision to become an entrepreneur. We argue that an entrepreneurial identity results from an individual’s socialization. This could be...

This paper analyzes peer effects among university scientists. Specifically, it investigates whether the number of peers and their average quality affects the productivity of researchers in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. The usual endogeneity problems related to estimating peer effects are...