Why has peer achievement research produced positive, null, and negative effects? We argue that the composition of classroom achievement combines two distinct pro- cesses. Higher-achieving classmates can improve the learning environment through knowledge, behaviors, and academic norms, but they also alter students’ relative standing within the local achievement hierarchy. Conventional peer-effect estimates may therefore combine learning and positional effects that operate differently across students. We examine these processes using longitudinal administrative data from Italy, following students from Grade 5 to Grade 8. To separate peer characteristics from prior joint exposure, we measure the Grade 5 achievement of newly encountered Grade 8 classmates. We assess within-school classroom sorting using a permutation- based diagnostic and exploit within-student, across-subject variation between Italian and Mathematics. This design compares the same student with the same classmates across subject-specific achievement environments while accounting for own prior achievement. Both peer achievement and relative standing are positively associated with subsequent achievement when modeled jointly, but the positional association is substantially larger. These relationships are also strongly heterogeneous. Learn- ing effects become more favorable as prior achievement increases, while positional effects are particularly pronounced among high achievers; their joint pattern also varies by socioeconomic background. The results recast classrooms as both learning and positional environments and show why average peer effects can obscure how classroom composition shapes achievement

Using novel population data, this article examines the effect of classroom-level linguistic diversity on the English reading and listening scores of fifth-grade students in Italy. Previous European studies have primarily focused on the influence of classroom ethnic composition on mathematics and native language scores, often overlooking second-language outcomes and relying on complex variables such as ethnic diversity. We address this gap by investigating English score outcomes in a non-Anglophone context. Our study focuses on classroom linguistic environments, employing a linguistic diversity index that distinguishes between speakers of different languages. Although the effects are minimal on a practical level, we find that greater classroom linguistic diversity has a positive impact on the English scores of Italian-born students. These findings highlight the importance of considering linguistic diversity in education and offer a more nuanced perspective on optimal classroom composition in countries with significant migrant populations.

A longstanding debate in research on peer effects concerns whether exposure to high-achieving classmates enhances or depresses students’ academic performance. While normative models emphasize positive spillovers, social comparison theories highlight negative contrast effects, and empirical evidence remains mixed. Moreover, it is unclear whether peer effects operate similarly across institutional contexts. This study addresses these issues through a comparative analysis of Italy and Norway, two educational systems that differ markedly in competitiveness, tracking, evaluation practices, and gender norms. Using harmonized, population-wide administrative register data, we follow three full student cohorts from Grade 5 to Grade 8. This longitudinal design allows us to control for prior achievement—an advantage unavailable in international assessments such as PISA, TIMSS, or PIRLS. We estimate value-added school fixed-effects models that exploit within-school, across-cohort variation in peer composition. Across both countries, higher average peer achievement is associated with lower individual performance, consistent with social comparison mechanisms. Exposure to top-performing peers has negative effects, while exposure to low-performing peers has positive effects. These patterns are similar across countries and do not vary systematically by gender, suggesting that peer comparison processes are remarkably stable across institutional contexts.

Students in compulsory education spend a considerable amount of time in the classroom interacting with peers and teachers, from whom they receive feedback and signals about their academic competencies. We develop a theoretical framework that integrates the role of teachers’ evaluations, the labeling effect, the categorical judgements model, the big-fish-in-little-pond, and the rational choice theory for understanding categorical inequalities generated within the school environment induced by classroom peer comparison. We argue that teachers, via attributing marks to students, create Teacher-Induced Student Hierarchy (TISH), and the perception of one’s position in this hierarchy affects subsequent educational outcomes, but heterogeneously depending on students’ ascriptive characteristics. We exploit the idiosyncratic variation generated by differential teachers' grading standards across classrooms to identify the effect of TISH. The relative student's position in the classroom hierarchy, net of her absolute performance level, raises the probability of enrolling in the academic track, the expectation of university enrolment, and levels of academic competencies. We observed that boys and students from lower SES backgrounds, who typically have weaker academic standings, are more responsive to their placement in the TISH. Some of these effects seem to stem from the influence of TISH on some socio-emotional skills.

We present an in-depth analysis of educational inequality in Italy, focusing on disparities in educational outcomes and opportunities across different socio-economic, gender, and migration backgrounds. Leveraging administrative longitudinal data, we construct a dataset of 386 small geographical areas with a sufficient sample size to assess the extent to which key ascriptive characteristics predict the mathematical achievement of Italian students in the 5th grade of primary school. Our findings highlight a substantial influence of ascriptive characteristics on students’ educational attainment, able to correctly predict out-of-sample up to 20

We examine the main sources of social background inequalities in academic track enrolment and whether their relative importance varies across 103 Italian provinces. We distinguish between three channels by which social inequalities in educational transitions are reproduced, the ‘primary’, ‘secondary’, and ‘tertiary’ effects (Boudon, 1974; Esser, 2016). They refer to the role of individual competencies, teachers’ assessments, and family decisions, respectively. We compiled a student population panel dataset from the INVALSI-SNV, following 1.34 million students from five cohorts (2013–2017) enrolled in the 8th grade of lower secondary school (untracked) to the 10th grade of upper secondary education (tracked). The results from the KHB method suggest that secondary effects are the prevalent source of reproduction of inequalities in academic track enrolment, followed by tertiary and then primary effects. Interestingly, we find more geographical heterogeneity in the channels by which educational inequalities are reproduced than in the total inequality by social background. Moreover, our findings align with the Incremental Reproduction regime found in cross-national studies, emphasising that an increase in secondary effects does not correspond to any notable variation in the magnitude of primary or tertiary effects.

Despite the growing attention on teachers' grading practices in educational research, less attention has been dedicated to understanding the consequences of teachers' grading standards, especially in early stages of their scholastic career, on later students' educational outcomes. This paper aims at filling this gap, analyzing the impact of teacher's severity in grading on students' competences development and academic track enrollment, and how it varies according to students' gender and socio-economic background. The analysis relies on Italian INVALSI-SNV data: information on 5th graders and their teachers are linked, and pupils are followed up to 8th and 10th grade, in which their competences and school track are recorded. Results show that being exposed to stricter grading in 5th grade leads to higher students' competences later, and to higher probability to enroll in the most prestigious academic track, with no notable heterogeneous effects across students with different sociodemographic characteristics.

The educational system is a crucial institutional arena for the long-term successful integration of the children of immigrants into destination countries. We study the consequences of the presence of students with a migration background on various student outcomes in Italy, a country that experienced a rapid increase in immigration fluxes. We enrich the literature in several ways: 1) we analyze not only students’ competencies but also their well-being and social integration; 2) we investigate the joint effects of two dimensions of migrants’ presence in the classroom, namely immigrant concentration and ethno-linguistic diversity; 3) we develop an analytical design to make exposure to a level of immigrant share and ethnolinguistic diversity conditionally random. We use data collected by the National Institute for the Evaluation of the Italian School System on the entire population of students enrolled in the fifth grade (primary education) in 2014–15 (INVALSI, 2015) (n=222,365) Our findings suggest that immigrant concentration and ethno-linguistic diversity in the classroom have limited detrimental effects on student outcomes; their minor effects are widely independent of each other and approximately linear. There is weak evidence of heterogeneous impacts across students with different migration backgrounds; the impact is tiny and appears to be concentrated exclusively on first-generation students. Implications for theoretical debate and educational policies are discussed in relation to the findings.

Students in compulsory education spend a considerable amount of time in the classroom interacting with peers and teachers, from whom they receive feedback and signals about their academic competencies. We develop a theoretical framework that integrates the role of teachers’ evaluations, the labeling effect, the categorical judgements model, the big-fish-in-little-pond, and the rational choice theory for understanding categorical inequalities generated within the school environment induced by classroom peer comparison. We argue that teachers, via attributing marks to students, create Teacher-Induced Student Hierarchy (TISH), and the perception of one’s position in this hierarchy affectssubsequent educational outcomes, but heterogeneously depending on students’ ascriptive characteristics. We exploit the idiosyncratic variation generated by differential teachers' grading standards across classrooms to identify the effect of TISH. The relative student's position in the classroom hierarchy, net of her absolute performance level, raises the probability of enrolling in the academic track, the expectation of university enrolment, and levels of academic competencies. We observed that boys and students from lower SES backgrounds, who typically have weaker academic standings, are more responsive to their placement in the TISH. Some of these effects seem to stem from the influence of TISH on some socio-emotional skills.

Dall’Unione Economica Monetaria al Trattato di Amsterdam. Shocks asimmetrici e specializzazioni produttive. La crisi internazionale e l’instabilita dei debiti sovrani.