TY - RPRT A1 - Brade, Raphael A1 - Himmler, Oliver A1 - Jäckle, Robert T1 - Relative Performance Feedback and Long-Term Tasks – Experimental Evidence from Higher Education N2 - We present first experimental evidence that relative performance feedback improves both the speed and quality with which challenging long-term tasks are completed. Providing university students with ongoing relative feedback on accumulated course credits accelerates graduation by 0.12 SD, and also improves grades by 0.063 SD. Treatment effects are concentrated among students with medium pre-treatment graduation probabilities: when these students are informed about an above-average performance, their outcomes improve – otherwise their outcomes deteriorate. Combined with survey evidence, this pattern of results suggests that learning about own ability is a plausible mechanism. KW - relative performance feedback KW - rank KW - natural field experiment KW - higher education Y1 - 2023 UR - https://www.cesifo.org/en/publications/2023/working-paper/relative-performance-feedback-and-long-term-tasks-experimental ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Brade, Raphael A1 - Himmler, Oliver A1 - Jäckle, Robert A1 - Weinschenk, Philipp T1 - Helping Students to Succeed – The Long-Term Effects of Soft Commitments and Reminders N2 - To study whether a soft commitment device can help students succeed, we conduct a randomized field experiment and follow a cohort of tertiary students over six years. Students can commit to following their recommended study program structure, and they receive reminders each semester. This easily implementable, low-cost intervention is highly effective: it increases the five-year graduation rate (+15 percentage points) and reduces time to graduation (-0.42 semesters), driven by reduced dropout and an increase in credits obtained per semester. The effects are stronger for suspected procrastinators. A treatment only reminding students to follow the program structure has limited effects. KW - commitment device KW - reminder KW - higher education KW - randomized field experiment Y1 - 2024 UR - https://www.cesifo.org/en/publications/2024/working-paper/helping-students-succeed-long-term-effects-soft-commitments-and ER -