Work

Social policy gone bad educationally: Unintended peer effects from transferred students

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: What is the impact of an increase of lower-ability students in a university class? We examine a natural experiment in which students from large, low-income families had the chance to transfer to academic programs at a local university. Multiple law changes meant that there was significant, quasi-random variability in the number of transferred students over time, which was orthogonal to the quality of receiving students. We create a novel dataset for the top economics department in Greece and show that the social policy had a negative educational impact by uniformly lowering recipient students' academic performance once the proportion of transferred students exceeded a certain threshold.

Source: Journal of Policy Modeling

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpolmod.2026.01.003

Authors: Christos Genakos, Eleni Kyrkopoulou

Institutions: University of Cambridge, Centre for Economic Policy Research, University of Piraeus, Yale University

Language: English

Topic: School Choice and Performance

Subfield: Education

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Reduced inequalities, Quality education, No poverty

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $1,500