It’s not what you know but who you know: Heterogeneous peer effects at a Colombian university

This paper uses matched survey and administrative data on first-year Economics students who were studying at the Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2015 in order to estimate peer effects on student grades. We employ the strategy proposed by De Giorgi, Pellizzari & Redaelli (2010) to identify and estimate these peer effects. Our results show that peer effects are economically significant in their context, that they result from the sharing of specific rather than general skills among peers, and that they flow mainly from peers with whom students interact frequently and who are considered to be leaders.