Peer effects in the pursuit of further education

ABSTRACT

This study investigates peer effects in the pursuit of graduate further education among college students. We employ a standard instrumental variable approach to address the ‘reflection problem’ and discover a positive causal relationship between a student’s decision to pursue further education and that of their friends. The effects, which aggravate the social stratification of educational attainment, are significant both statistically and economically.

KEYWORDS:

• Peer effects
• friendship network
• post-graduation plans
• college seniors

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I21
• I23
• J24

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

For the purpose of replication, all data and code are available on the corresponding author’s personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/neilningyu/working-papers.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2024.2368746.

Additional information

Funding

Wu acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [72394391 & 72033004]; Yu from NSFC [72325009 & 72073072].