Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank

Murphy, Richard; Weinhardt, Felix

doi:10.3386/w24958

Cited by 33 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…18 These effects are in line with the non-experimental results reported by Murphy and Weinhardt (2016). Besides effects on student performance within subjects, the results from this English study suggest that, conditional on ability, a high-rank position in primary school in a particular subject has long-term effects on test scores and subject choice, particularly for boys.…”

Section: Relative (Vs Absolute) Gradingsupporting

confidence: 80%

Nudging in education

Damgaard

Nielsen

2018

Economics of Education Review

247

110

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Can we nudge children, adolescents and their parents to make better decisions on education? And can we nudge teachers to support and encourage better decision making? Education decisions are taken at young ages and involve immediate costs and potential, future benefits. In such settings behavioural barriers (e.g. lack of selfcontrol, limited attention and social norms) likely influence choices and this may motivate the use of low cost 'nudges' to gently push behaviour in the desired direction. Our review of nudging interventions shows that while nudging often has positive effects, the greatest effects often arise for individuals affected most by the behavioural barrier targeted by the intervention. Hence understanding underlying behavioural mechanisms is crucial. Negative effects may arise in situations where nudges potentially crowd-out intrinsic motivation, if nudges pressurise individuals, or in situations where the choice architect has an insufficient understanding of behavioural mechanisms.[P]eople will need nudges for decisions that are difficult and rare, for which they do not get prompt feedback, and when they have trouble translating aspects of the situation into terms that they can easily understand.

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Section: Relative (Vs Absolute) Gradingsupporting

confidence: 80%

Nudging in education

Damgaard

Nielsen

2018

Economics of Education Review

247

110

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“…Murphy & Weinhardt (2013)). This can explain why weaker students do not improve in the boarding school, as they lose many ranks when they join.…”

Section: Ready For Boarding?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Though this interpretation is somewhat speculative, we review other potential mechanisms, and we argue that they cannot fully account for all of our findings. For instance, recent research has shown that higher within-class ordinal position has a positive effect on academic performance (see Murphy & Weinhardt (2013)). This can explain why weaker students do not improve in the boarding school, as they lose many ranks when they join.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ready for Boarding? The Effects of a Boarding School for Disadvantaged Students

Behaghel

Chaisemartin

Gurgand

2017

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

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Boarding schools substitute school to home, but little is known on the effects this substitution produces on students. We present results of an experiment in which seats in a boarding school for disadvantaged students were randomly allocated. Boarders enjoy better studying conditions than control students. However, they start outperforming control students in mathematics only two years after admission, and this effect mostly comes from strong students. After one year, levels of well-being are lower among boarders, but in their second year, students adjust: well-being catches-up. This suggests that substituting school to home is disruptive: only strong students benefit from the boarding school, once they have managed to adapt to their new environment.

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“…We follow Murphy & Weinhardt (2014) and employ a speci cation with schoolspeci c grade xed e ects. This strategy eliminates di erences in grade means of observable and unobservable characteristics; identi cation comes from di erences in the dispersion of the ability distribution across grades within a school.…”

Section: Identification and Estimation Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A large literature in psychology focuses on a student's academic self-concept, showing that students with a higher ordinal rank have a higher perceived ability in various school subjects (Marsh, 1987;Marsh et al, 2007). The rst rigorous causal estimate of ordinal rank on educational performance is provided by Murphy & Weinhardt (2014), who use administrative school data from the UK, and nd a strong positive impact of ordinal rank in primary school on test scores in secondary school. Our paper uses a very similar research design, but departs from their study in two important dimensions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Big Fish in a Small Pond: Ability Rank and Human Capital Investment

Elsner

Isphording

2017

Journal of Labor Economics

161

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We study the impact of a student's ordinal rank in a high school cohort on educational attainment several years later. To identify a causal effect, we compare multiple cohorts within the same school, exploiting idiosyncratic variation in cohort composition. We find that a student's ordinal rank significantly affects educational outcomes later in life. If two students with the same ability have a different rank in their respective cohort, the higher-ranked student is significantly more likely to finish high school, attend college, and complete a 4-year college degree. These results suggest that low-ranked students under-invest in their human capital even if they have a high ability compared to most students of the same age. Exploring potential channels, we find that students with a higher rank have higher expectations about their future career, a higher perceived intelligence, and receive more support from their teachers. NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYParents often believe that high-ability classmates have a positive influence on their children, and potential classmates are often a decisive factor for choosing a school. In this paper, we show that having high-ability peers in school is not beneficial for everyone. A student who is surrounded by peers that are smarter than herself has a low ordinal rank within her peer group, which may come with some disadvantages. While she may benefit from studying with smarter peers, she may experience a disadv...

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Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank

Cited by 33 publications

References 80 publications

Nudging in education

Nudging in education

Ready for Boarding? The Effects of a Boarding School for Disadvantaged Students

A Big Fish in a Small Pond: Ability Rank and Human Capital Investment

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