I study the relative academic performance of students tracked or randomly assigned to South African university dormitories. Tracking reduces low-scoring students' GPAs but has little effect on high-scoring students. This lowers mean GPA and raises GPA dispersion. I also directly estimate peer effects using random variation in peer groups across dormitories. Living with higher-scoring peers raises students' GPAs and this effect is larger for low-scoring students. Peer effects operate largely within race groups but operate both within and across programs of study. This suggests that spatial proximity alone does not generate peer effects. Interaction of some sort is required, but direct academic collaboration is not the relevant form of interaction. I integrate the results from variation in group assignment policies and variation in group composition by drawing on the matching and sorting literatures. Both sets of results imply that own and peer academic performance are substitutes in GPA production and that GPA may be a concave function of peer group performance. The cross-dormitory results correctly predict a negative effect of tracking on low-scoring students but understate the magnitude of the observed effect. I show that this understatement reflects both policy-sensitive parameter estimates and problems with extrapolation outside the support of the data observed under random assignment. This underlines the value of using both cross-policy and cross-group variation to study peer effects.

This study analyzes the effects of differences in survey frequency and medium on microenterprise survey data. A sample of enterprises were randomly assigned to monthly in-person, weekly in-person, or weekly phone surveys for a 12-week panel. The results show few differences across the groups in measured means, distributions, and deviations of measured data from an objective data-quality standard provided by Benford’s Law. However, phone interviews generated higher within-enterprise variation through time in several variables and may be more sensitive to social desirability bias. Higher-frequency interviews did not lead to persistent changes in reporting or increase permanent attrition from the panel but did increase the share of missed interviews. These findings show that collecting high-frequency survey data by phone does not substantially affect data quality. However, researchers who are particularly interested in within-enterprise dynamics should exercise caution when choosing survey medium.

High-frequency data is useful to measure volatility, reduce recall bias, and measure dynamic treatment effects. We conduct the first experimental evaluation of high-frequency phone surveys in a developing country or with microenterprises. We randomly assign microenterprise owners to monthly in-person, weekly inperson, or weekly phone interviews. We find high-frequency phone surveys are useful and accurate. Phone and in-person surveys yield similar measurements, with few large or significant differences in reported outcome means or distributions. Neither interview frequency nor medium affects reported outcomes in a common in-person endline. Phone surveys reduce costs without increasing permanent attrition from the panel. * We are grateful for helpful comments from

We assess South African workseekers’ skills and disseminate the assessment results to explore how limited information affects firm and workseeker behavior. Giving workseekers assessment results that they can credibly share with firms increases workseekers’ employment and earnings and better aligns their skills, beliefs and search strategies. Giving workseekers assessment results that they cannot easily share with firms has similar effects on beliefs and search, but smaller effects on employment and earnings. Giving assessment results only to firms shifts interview decisions. These findings show that getting credible skill information to the right agents can improve outcomes in the labor market. (JEL J22, J23, J24, J31, J41, J64, O15)

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.