Research

Work in progress

Peer effects in mental health (with H. Jansen)

In this paper, we provide novel evidence on peer effects in mental health. Using data on 230,000 Norwegian high school students leveraging within-school/classroom variation in peers over time, we show that the share of peers diagnosed with a prior diagnosis of mental health disorder increases own mental health-related health care use and decreases on-time school completion and GPA. The effect is driven by girls and by students with prior history of mental health-related health care use. We show evidence suggesting that a key mechanism is emotional contagion (i.e. a direct effect of peers' mental health on own mental health), rather than classroom disturbance / teacher resources or updating beliefs about stigma or treatment effectiveness. 

Peer effects in prison (with L. Khoury)

Peer interactions likely play an especially important role in the criminal sector due to its secretive nature and lack of formal institutions. Crucially, a large part of criminal peer exposure happens in prison, and is thus directly under the influence of policy makers and prison administrators. This paper provides a more comprehensive understanding of these prison peer effects, shedding light on how to reduce recidivism and criminal network formation through changes in the composition of inmates. Our research design causally identifies peer effects in prison using rich Norwegian register data on over 150,000 prison spells and leveraging within-prison facility variation in peers over time. We produce several novel findings. First, exposure to more experienced co-inmates increases recidivism. Second, our results underscore the role of homophily and suggests network formation rather than skill acquisition as an important mechanism. Third, exposure to ``top criminals'' plays a distinctive role in shaping recidivism patterns. Fourth, we provide the first explicit documentation of criminal network formation among prison co-inmates.

Adverse Impacts of Supply Restrictions in Secondary Schooling (with H. Jansen)

[Working paper] 

Many students are restricted from pursuing their preferred educational paths due to, e.g., supply restrictions and meritocratic admission policies. In this paper, we document negative effects on well-being for students who are denied admission to their preferred upper secondary school and educational track. Using novel data on more than 170,000 Norwegian student applications and applying a regression discontinuity design to GPA thresholds for grade-based admission, we find that students who are denied admission to their preferred track-school combination are significantly more likely to receive a mental health diagnosis, to reapply to a first-year program a year after their first application, and to experience delays in their school progression. A key finding is that the negative impacts of rejection depend on track-level supply restrictions at the regional level: The effects are driven by students in school regions with few school options within their preferred track.