Asymmetries in the gender effect of high-performing peers: Evidence from tertiary education

Abstract

This paper exploits student-level administrative data on the population of Italian university students from 2006 to 2014, in order to analyse the effects of high-performing (HP) male and female peers on individual academic performance, according to the gender of the student. The identification strategy is based on quasi-random variations in the exposure to HP peers across cohorts, within the same university and the same degree programme. The impact of the gender of HP students, proxied by their high school final grade, is asymmetric. We found that the beneficial effects of HP peers are stronger on same-gender students and, in particular, for females. Moreover, while female HP students also positively influence male students, HP males do not generally exert any impact on their female peers. The exposure to male HP students becomes negative for low-ability students.