When effort is observable to peers, students may act to avoid social penalties by conforming to prevailing norms. To test for such behavior, we conducted an experiment in which 11th grade students were offered complimentary access to an online SAT preparatory course. Signup sheets differed...

Public school choice programs give households a free choice of public school and provide schools incentives to compete for students. Proponents of these programs argue that by the usual market logic, choice and competition will improve the quality of the education that schools provide. Critics...

We provide the first empirical evidence on direct sibling spillover effects in school achievement using English administrative data. Our identification strategy exploits the variation in school test scores across three subjects observed at age 11 and 16 and the variation in the composition of...

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this study analyzes peer effects on obesity in a sample of 3- to 18-year-old children and adolescents in China. Even after a rich set of covariates and unobserved individual heterogeneity are controlled for, it is evident that such...

Productivity varies greatly among farmers and the source of that variation is not fully understood. Using a unique Indian household survey, we estimate peer effects on agricultural revenue. Results show that 60% of farmers' revenue is explained by peers. Input expenditures and land allocation to...

This study investigates peer effects in the online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending market using data from a Chinese online lending platform (Renrendai). The empirical results indicate that peers’ greater success rate in attracting loans leads to borrowers’ greater success rate (peer effects of...

Despite the booming Fintech industry, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending platforms continue to play an insignificant role. This study explores differences in time preferences and risk-attitude between P2P lenders and the general public. The findings indicated that P2P lenders are less risk-averse and...

This study examines peer influence, and its underlying motives, on environmental protection performance. We find consistent evidence of peer effects on environmental protection performance among Chinese firms. When the average environmental protection score of industry peers increases by one...