Instructor attire and student performance: Evidence from an undergraduate industrial organization experiment

Four classes of the same Industrial Organization class were compared. The test group was taught by the instructor dressed in business attire, while the comparison group was taught by the instructor dressed casually. Results show that the attendance for test students was 8.50 percentage points higher than comparison students and this increase is associated with an improvement in their final exam score of 0.69 percentage points. Final exam scores for test students were 2.33 percentage points higher than comparison students. Together, the indirect and direct effects indicate that the total effect on learning from instructor attire is 3.02 percentage points.