Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/229514 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 8696
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
I study how motivation shapes own and peers’ educational success. Using data from Project STAR, I find that academic motivation in early elementary school, as measured by a standardized psychological test, predicts contemporaneous and future test scores, high school GPA, and college-test taking over and above cognitive skills. Exploiting random assignment of students to classes, I find that exposure to motivated classmates causally affects contemporaneous reading achievement, a peer effect that operates over and above spillovers from classmates’ past achieve-ment and socio-demographic composition. However, peer motivation does not affect longer-term educational success, likely because it does not change own motivation.
Subjects: 
motivation
personality
peer effects
Project STAR
JEL: 
I21
J13
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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