Booking a Flight or Not? The Personality of Migrant Peers and Local Students' Performance in Urban China

This paper examines the educational spillover effects of migrant personality on the academic performance of local students, exploring the random assignment of students into Chinese middle school classrooms. We find that local students perform better in the presence of more conscientiousness and extraversion migrant peers but worse when more neurotic migrant peers appear in the classroom. Investigations into mechanisms suggest that local students' educational and future aspirations, time allocation, and social network formation are altered by migrant personality traits. This study provides novel evidence on educational peer effects of migrant personality in middle school and lends support for policies targeting desegregation among public schools