Celebrating Success: Dr Smriti Sharma

Congratulations to Dr Smriti Sharma on her paper ‘Effect of peers and rank on cognition, preferences and personality’ which will be published in Review of Economics and Statistics shortly. This is coauthored with Utteeyo Dasgupta (Wagner College, USA), Subha Mani (Fordham University, USA) and Saurabh Singhal (Lancaster University, UK).

Abstract: We exploit the variation in admission cut-offs across colleges at a leading Indian university to estimate the causal effects of enrolling in a selective college on cognitive attainment, economic preferences, and Big Five personality traits. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that enrolling in a selective college improves university exam scores of the marginally admitted females, and makes them less overconfident and less risk averse, while males in selective colleges experience a decline in extraversion and conscientiousness. We find differences in peer quality and rank concerns to be driving our findings.