Peer Effects, Motivation, and Learning

This paper confirms the existence of peer effects in a learning process withdata from an experiment. The experimental setting offers an insight into themechanisms of peer interaction and provides complementary information toempirical studies using survey or administrative data. The results show thata partner has a motivational effect even before the actual cooperation takesplace. The evidence for optimal group composition is not robust. Some of the"better" students improve the performance of their partner but they inducelower motivation.