Welcome to Hikaru's website.
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
I'm an applied microeconomist, mainly focusing on the Economics of Education, Economics of Crime, Development Economics, and Labor Economics.
I completed a PhD at University College London (UCL), Department of Economics, in November 2025.
I am on the 2026-27 job market from UCL.
My job market paper is "When Trouble Travels: Peer Effects of Criminal Exposure in Schools."
Abstract: First contact with the criminal justice system peaks in early adolescence, when children spend much of their time with peers at school. While a large literature documents that peers shape children's development and behavior, little is known about the consequences of exposure to peers with a criminal record. Using administrative data linking criminal justice and education records for nearly all students in England, I study whether and to what extent criminal behavior spreads within schools through exposure to juvenile offenders. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous timing of school transfers by students with a known criminal record, I find that exposure increases a student's probability of starting a criminal career by 12.9% within four months, with effects persisting for at least three years. Exposure also lowers educational achievement, with most of the decline operating through exposed students' subsequent criminal behavior. These peer effects account for 5% of the total social cost of youth crime in England. Because the effects vary substantially with school characteristics, reassigning transferring offenders to other schools could reduce peer-induced crime by 36% under reasonable assumptions.
[Best paper award at Essen Health Conference 2026]
My latest CV is available below and here.
hikaru.kawarazaki@ifs.org.uk