Peer Effects in European Primary Schools: Evidence from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study
利用六个欧洲国家四年级学生的数据，通过班级内随机分班识别同伴效应，发现测量误差会低估效应，而学校选择偏差影响不大，对教育政策制定者和研究者有参考价值。
We estimate peer effects for fourth graders in six European countries. The identification relies on variation across classes within schools, which we argue are formed roughly randomly. The estimates are much reduced within schools compared to the standard ordinary least squares (OLS) results. This could be explained either by selection into schools or by measurement error in the peer variable. Correcting for measurement error, we find within-school estimates close to the original OLS estimates. Our results suggest that the peer effect is modestly large, measurement error is important in our survey data, and selection plays little role in biasing peer effects estimates. (c) 2009 by The University of Chicago.