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...

In this paper we show that a student's ordinal rank in a high school cohort is an important determinant of engaging in risky behaviors. Using longitudinal data from representative US high schools, and exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the cohort composition within a school, we find a strong...

This paper studies how a student's ordinal rank in a peer group affects performance and specialisation choices in university. By exploiting data with repeated random assignment of students to teaching sections, we find that a higher rank increases performance and the probability of choosing...