Rank Effects in Education: What Do We Know So Far?

Abstract

In recent years there has been a plethora of empirical papers by economists concerning the effects of academic rank in school or college on subsequent outcomes of students.We review this recent literature, describing the difficult identification and measurement issues, the assumptions and methodologies used in the literature, and the main findings.Accounting for ability or achievement and across a range of countries, ages, and types of educational institutions, students that are more highly ranked in their class or their grade have been found to have better long-term outcomes. The effect sizes are generally large when compared to magnitudes found for other factors and interventions. Rank effects can provide useful insight into other educational phenomena such as the extent to which students benefit from high ability peers and the presence of a gender gap in STEM.However, the state of knowledge has probably not reached the point where the empirical findings from this literature have practical implications for policy intervention to improve outcomes of students.

The Effect of Classroom Rank on Learning Throughout Elementary School: Experimental Evidence from Ecuador

“…33 Our results show a lack of effects of late classroom rank on achievement. This is somewhat in contrast with other papers in the literature, which find effects of rank on outcomes measured later in life (see Delaney and Devereux (2022) for a review of the literature). The impact of rank may depend on how much time a student has to learn about their rank and experience its effects.…”

“…They emerge naturally in tournaments (Lazear and Rosen 1981), they affect job satisfaction (Card et al 2012), and can interact in interesting ways with social preferences (Bandiera et al 2005). Although the idea that rank is important in education dates back to Marsh (1987), recent years have seen a growing literature quantifying its importance for a variety of outcomes (including Isphording 2017 and2018;Tincani 2018;Murphy and Weinhardt 2020;Elsner et al 2021;Pagani et al 2021;Comi et al 2021;Bertoni and Nisticò 2023;Denning et al 2023;Kiessling and Norris 2023;Delaney and Devereux 2022 provide an excellent survey of the recent literature), and showing medium-and long-term impacts on college major choice and attendance, earnings, and the probability of engaging in risky behaviors. 2 In this paper, we investigate the impact of classroom rank on learning and other outcomes throughout elementary school.…”

Rather First in a Village than Second in Rome? The Effect of Students' Class Rank in Primary School on Subsequent Academic Achievements

“…Other papers use standardized test grades 3 to obtain a proxy for the actual class rank, inheriting the limitation underlined by Delaney and Devereux (2022). Thanks to our new data, we can also offer evidence that we can more completely control for ability and other peer effects, thus increasing confidence in interpreting the rank effect.…”

“…Consistent with previous research, these papers find that ranking in early stages of education affects subsequent performance and achievements and influences personality traits and behavior. In their review of the rank literature, Delaney and Devereux (2022) however point out to a limitation inherent to this strategy, namely the difficulty to sort out the rank effect from other intricate peer effects even "randomizing identical students into many classes that are identical in every way except that they differ in terms of the distribution of human capital of their students", which is, in their view, "the best [one] could do." Our new identification strategy suggests a way to plausibly control for peer effects as it does not require variations in the ability (i.e., human capital) distribution of peers for identification.…”