Let me inform you of the following research seminar.

Date:November 4  (Tue.)  , 2025 
Time:5:20PM-6:50PM
Venue: 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2 Meeting Room B
Speaker: Hikaru Kawarazaki (UCL/IFS)
Organizer: Masaki Takahashi
Language:English

Title:
A Rotten Apple: Peer Effects of Criminal Exposure in Schools
Abstract:
A child's peers are a vital determinant of their performance at school. While it has been well documented that being exposed to disruptive peers can have adverse effects on educational outcomes, little is known about the impact of being exposed to a peer with a criminal background. In this paper, leveraging a rich administrative dataset that links crime and education records for nearly the entire universe of school students in England, I study the extent to which criminality spreads within schools from juvenile criminal peers. Exploiting the plausibly random timing of school transfers of students with a criminal record, I find that exposure to a criminal peer increases the peer's probability of starting a criminal career by 6.4% within four months of transfer. Furthermore, exposure to a peer with an offense record has an adverse effect on educational attainment, with approximately one quarter of the observed decline attributable to direct exposure effects, and the remaining three quarters mediated through engaging in criminal behavior.