← volver

SEMINARIO CEA-MIPP: «The Role of Information Frictions in Study Habit Choice and Academic Performance» Tomás Larrocau.

Los invitamos al ciclo de  SEMINARIOS ACADEMICO CEA-MIPP:

Cuándo: Miércoles 27 de mayo – 12:30 PM Santiago.

Dónde: Sala Consejo (401)- Beauchef 851, piso 4 | Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial.

Title: «The Role of Information Frictions in Study Habit Choice and Academic Performance»

Authors: with A. Affonso, E. Aucejo, and S. El Khoury

Speaker: Tomas Larroucau (ASU)

Abstract:

We study whether information frictions about the relative effectiveness of study methods distort how college students allocate effort. Standard models of learning typically treat effort as a single input, with outcomes determined by its level rather than its composition. We relax this assumption and study effort as an allocation across methods with heterogeneous effectiveness. Combining panel surveys, administrative records, digital activity logs, and a randomized information intervention with over 2,000 undergraduates, we ask whether imperfect information about relative effectiveness leads to systematic misallocation and quantify the resulting consequences for performance. At baseline, students hold strikingly different beliefs about the effectiveness of common study methods, and many devote substantial time to passive strategies, such as rereading, despite evidence that active retrieval is more effective. These choices explain lower performance and larger errors in self-assessment. To distinguish biased beliefs from efficient heterogeneity, we randomize students into a general-feedback arm or a personalized-feedback arm that benchmarks their habits against peers and quantifies the gains from reallocation. General feedback has little effect. Personalized feedback widens the perceived effectiveness gap between active and passive methods by 42 percent, shifts time toward more effective practices, and raises subsequent exam scores by 0.05–0.08 standard deviations. To quantify the mechanisms linking belief updating to behavior, we develop and estimate a dynamic model of multidimensional study effort with learning-by-doing and convex allocation costs. We find that, for students with the weakest baseline beliefs, the personalized treatment is equivalent to a 16.5 percent reduction in the cost of adopting more effective methods. Together, these results identify information frictions about the effectiveness of multidimensional effort as a relevant determinant of academic performance.