This chapter summarizes the recent literature on peer effects in student outcomes at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. Linear-in-means models find modest sized and statistically significant peer effects in test scores. But the linear-in-means model masks considerable...

Studying with higher ability peers increases student performance, yet we have little idea why. We exploit random assignment of students to classrooms and find positive peer effects on test scores. With very rich data on seventeen potential mechanisms, we then estimate how peer effects on...

Studying with higher ability peers increases student performance, yet we have little idea why. We exploit random assignment of students to classrooms and find positive peer effects on test scores. With rich data on nineteen potential mechanisms, we then estimate how effects on attitudes,...

In this paper, we investigate the impact of peers on own outcomes where all agents embedded in a network choose more than one activity. We develop a simple network model that illustrates these issues. We differentiate between the ‘seemingly unrelated’ simultaneous equations model where...