Impact of peers in educational outcomes in Economics

Abstract

This paper deepens the study of peer interactions in the university classroom. METHOD. We evaluate the effects of teamwork on individual academic performance in four Team Based Learning (TBL) courses in the degrees of Economics and Business Administration. RESULTS. We find that the average grade of the rest of the team members has a significant and positive association with individual student's grades. Student's own test score increases about 0.65 points for every 1-point increase in his teammate's average score. This association remains positive and significant even when we include socio-demographic variables to control for individual characteristics. We also test the heterogeneity of peer effects by ability of individual and team performance. DISCUSSION. The results suggest there is no heterogeneity in individual ability, but we find a positive or slightly negative difference in the magnitude of the peer effect for teams at the top/bottom quartile relative to teams in the middle of the distribution.