PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Pagani, Laura
AU  - Comi, Simona
AU  - Origo, Federica
TI  - The Effect of School Rank on Personality Traits
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.56.4.1218-9916R2
DP  - 2019 Oct 14
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 1218-9916R2
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2019/10/07/jhr.56.4.1218-9916R2.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2019/10/07/jhr.56.4.1218-9916R2.full
AB  - We study the effect of classroom rank on high-school students’ Big Five personality traits. We exploit idiosyncratic differences in the class distribution of earlier academic achievement. Such differences generate quasi-random variation in class rank for students with the same initial achievement. We find a positive and sizeable effect of rank on conscientiousness, but we find no effects on the other four personality traits. A thorough analysis of the mechanism suggests that the primary channels through which class rank improves conscientiousness are perceived ability and academic motivation.