Biography

Pedro Freitas is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the What Works Hub for Global Education at the University of Oxford. He holds a PhD in Economics from Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE).
His research focuses on the economics of education and human capital, with particular interests in teacher quality, teacher labour markets, standardized and teacher-based assessment, students’ aspirations, and international student mobility.
Pedro has contributed to several policy-oriented projects, including work on forecasting teacher shortages. He is also an external affiliated member of the Nova SBE Economics of Education Knowledge Center.

Abstract

Educational choices made during adolescence shape long-term academic and professional trajectories, particularly in systems that differentiate between academic and vocational tracks. While prior research highlights the role of subject preferences, expected wages, and parental influence, the impact of peer relationships on these decisions remains underexplored.
This paper examines how friendships affect track selection using a laboratory randomized experiment with ninth-grade students in Portugal. Increasing the salience to students of their best friend’s track choice makes them 9 percentage points more likely to choose the same track as that friend — an effect comparable to that of a 20% increase in expected wages. The influence of friends is stronger among closer friendships and among students facing an upcoming school transition. These patterns suggest that maintaining friendships may act as a form of social insurance in educational decision-making.
We find no significant heterogeneity in treatment effects by socioeconomic status or sex.

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