Short- and long-term effects of class assignment: Evidence from a flagship university in Brazil
利用巴西一所旗舰大学班级分配中的断点，研究发现进入更好班级的相对劣势学生绝对成绩下降，虽不影响未来收入，但更易换专业且较少获得高地位职业，且该效应主要由相对排名而非同伴质量驱动。
Given a discontinuity in the class assignment of a flagship university in Brazil, we find that the relative disadvantage students face in the better class reduces their absolute performance. Although their future earnings are unaffected, these students are more willing to switch majors and less likely to have a prestigious occupation. By checking the heterogeneity of the discontinuities, we find these results are not explained by differences in absolute peer quality, but instead by students relative rank. The rank effects on the willingness to switch majors and time to graduation are stronger for men than for women. While for women a small increase in peer quality offsets the effect of a lower rank; for men the rank effect dominates the effect of peer quality on average. Therefore, assigning disadvantaged students to a slightly better group may undermine their aspirations, but this effect disappears if the peer quality is high enough.