The psychological effects of academic labeling: The case of class tracks

This paper studies the psychological effects of academic labeling. Exploiting the class tracking policy in a Chinese university, we identify the psychological impacts of the academic labels associated with class tracks on the students via a regression discontinuity design in the track assignment rule. We establish causal evidence of positive effects of a better academic label on the academic self-concept and self-expectation of students as well as their academic interest. Our setup ensures that the identified effects of the labels are through the mechanism of student responses, not teachers and schools, suggesting that previous literature focusing on the mechanism of teachers and schools may have neglected an important channel through which academic labels may impact students.