Segal, Carmit. 2008. “Classroom Behavior.” Journal of Human Resources 43(4): 783–814.
This paper investigates the determinants and malleability of noncognitive skills. Using data on boys from the National Education Longitudinal Survey, I focus on youth behavior in the classroom as a measure of noncognitive skills. I find that student behavior during adolescence is persistent. The variation in behavior can be attributed to unobserved individual heterogeneity. Family and school characteristics, as well as the incentives for good behavior provided at home and in school, are important determinants of behavior. Neither the cross-sectional variation in behavior nor the variation over time in behavior can, however, be attributed to these covariates.
The author would like to thank her advisors, Ed Lazear, Muriel Niederle, and Ed Vytlacil for their encouragement, useful suggestions, and numerous conversations; members of the Stanford Labor group for useful discussions; seminar participants at Cornell University and at the University of Florida; three anonymous referees, Liran Einav, Florian Englmaier, Avner Greif, Susanna Loeb, Amalia Miller, John Pencavel, Luigi Pistaferri, Ravi Singh, Frank Wolak, and Nese Yildiz for helpful comments. Special thanks to Ilona Berkovits for access to, and assistance with the data. The author is grateful to Harvard Business School for generous support and hospitality and thanks the support of the Barcelona Economics Program of CREA. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning May 2009 through April 2012 from Carmit Segal, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27, Barcelona, Spain 08005 carmit.segal@upf.edu.