Papers
Job Market Paper
When Trouble Travels: Peer Effects of Criminal Exposure in Schools.
Abstract: A child's peers are an important determinant of their performance at school. While a large literature documents the adverse effects of exposure to disruptive peers on educational outcomes, little is known about the impact of being exposed to a peer with a criminal background. Using rich administrative data linking criminal justice and education records for nearly the entire population of school students in England, I study whether and to what extent criminal behavior spreads within schools through exposure to juvenile offenders. I exploit the plausibly exogenous timing of school transfers by students with a criminal record and find that exposure increases an exposed student's probability of starting a criminal career by 12.9% within four months of the transfer, with effects persisting for up to three years. These peer effects generate approximately 20 million pounds in social costs, equivalent to 5% of the total social cost of youth crime in England. The effects vary substantially across school characteristics, which means that reassigning transferring offenders across schools could reduce the volume of crime induced by peer exposure by 36% under reasonable assumptions. Exposure also reduces educational attainment. Approximately one-third of this decline reflects a direct effect of exposure, while the remaining two-thirds operate through the exposed student's subsequent engagement in criminal behavior.
[Best paper award at Essen Health Conference 2026]
Peer-reviewed Publication (all open access)
1. "Early Childhood Education and Care: Effects After Half a Century and their Mechanisms." Journal of Population Economics (2023).
The published article and the working paper.
2. "Haste Makes No Waste: Peer Effects of a Speed Competition on Math Score" (with Minhaj Mahmud, Yasuyuki Sawada, and Mai Seki). Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics (2023).
The published article and the working paper.
3. "Fighting the Learning Crisis in Developing Countries: A Randomized Experiment of Self-Learning at the Right Level" (with Yasuyuki Sawada, Minhaj Mahmud, and Mai Seki). Economic Development and Cultural Change (2024).
The published article, the working paper, the VoxDev article, and the replication package.
Working in Progress
Prolific Juvenile Offenders (with Sarah Cattan, Monica Costa-Dias, and Imran Rasul)
The Schooling System and Teen Crime: New Evidence on Gender Difference from Administrative Data from England (with Sarah Cattan, Monica Costa-Dias, and Imran Rasul)
Youth Crime in the Era of School Takeovers. Evidence from London Secondary School Academies (with Emma Duchini, Stephen Machin, and Victor Lavy)
Presentations
[2026] National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, European Association of Young Economists, Centre for Economic Performance-Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago Conference on the Economics of Crime and Justice, Essen Health Conference, European Society for Population Economics, Workshop on the Economics of Crime for Junior Scholars, Workshop on Labour and Family Economics, Kyoto Summer Workshop on Applied Economics, Royal Economic Society, Workshop on the Economics of Risky Behavior, European Association of Labour Economists Conference, Newcastle University, The Network Science and Economics Conference, University College London, Applied Econometrics Conference, Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex
[2025] Sophia University, Workshop on Education Economics and Policy, World Congress of the Econometric Society, Otaru University of Commerce, Royal Economic Society Annual Conference, University College London, Institute for Fiscal Studies
[2024] University of Tokyo, IZA/ECONtribute, International Monetary Fund, University College London, Institute for Fiscal Studies
[2023] University of Tokyo, Econometric Society European Winter Meeting, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, University College London, University of Mannheim
[2022] Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economics Conference, Institute for Fiscal Studies
[2021] HCEO-NES-CREC Virtual Summer School on Socioeconomic Inequality, Japanese Association of Development Economics
[2020] Otaru University of Commerce
[2019] Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economics 2019 Conference, Japanese Association of Development Economics, Asian Development Bank, University of the Philippines, Japanese Association of Development Economics, Otaru University of Commerce, Hitotsubashi University, Japan Economic Association Semi-annual Meeting, University of Tokyo
[2015] Korea-Japan Inter University Conference