In a one-year randomised controlled trial involving thousands of university students, we provide real-time private feedback on relative performance in a semester-long online assignment. Within this set-up, our experimental design cleanly identifies the behavioural response to rank incentives (i.e., incentives stemming from an inherent preference for high rank). We find that rank incentives boost performance in the related course assignment, but also the average course exams grade by 0.21 SDs. These beneficial effects remain sizeable across all quantiles and extend beyond the intervention period. Furthermore, rank feedback stimulates social learning, i.e., rank incentives make students engage more in peer interactions.

中文翻译：

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教育中的相对绩效反馈：来自随机对照试验的证据*

在一项涉及数千名大学生的为期一年的随机对照试验中，我们在一个学期的在线作业中提供有关相对表现的实时私人反馈。在这个设置中，我们的实验设计清楚地确定了对排名激励的行为反应（即，激励源于对高排名的固有偏好）。我们发现排名激励可以提高相关课程作业的表现，而且平均课程考试成绩也提高了 0.21 个标准差。这些有益影响在所有分位数上仍然相当大，并且超出了干预期。此外，排名反馈刺激社会学习，即排名激励使学生更多地参与同伴互动。