Jonathan Presler

"You Are Who You Eat With: Academic Peer Effects from School Lunch Lines"

(2022) Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 203, 43-58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2022.08.029.

Job Market Paper.

Abstract:  Using daily lunch transaction data from NYC public schools, I determine which students frequently stand next to one another in the lunch line. I use this 'revealed' friendship network to estimate academic peer effects in elementary school classrooms, improving on previous work by defining not only where social connections exist, but the relative strength of these connections. Equally weighting all peers in a reference group assumes that all peers are equally important and may bias estimates by underweighting important peers and overweighting unimportant peers. I find that students who eat together are important influencers of one another's academic performance, with stronger effects in math than in reading. Further exploration of the mechanisms supports my claim that these are friendship networks. I also compare the influence of friends from different periods in the school year and find that connections occurring around standardized testing dates are most influential on test scores.

"Who’s Affecting Who? Obesity Peer Effects in NYC Public Schools"

Under Review.

Abstract:  Obesity rates continue to climb in the US, as they have been doing for the past several decades. This phenomenon is evident in both adults and children, and the obesity epidemic has profound individual and public costs. Obesity during a child's early years are particularly problematic because obesity is difficult to reverse. This is a multi-faceted problem, and an area of growing literature focuses on the social contagion around obesity and overweight. Most of this work focuses on adolescents and college students - missing crucial early years of development. This paper focuses on obesity peer effects in New York City elementary school classrooms. Using reduced form models common in the peer effects literature, I find evidence of significant causal social effects both in BMI and exposure to overweight and obese students. Further exploration into the heterogeneity of these effects finds that elementary boys are more affected by peer weight than girls, and I find little difference by race.

"What Makes a Classmate a Peer? Examining Which Peers Matter in NYC Elementary Schools"

with William Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, and Amy Ellen Schwartz

Under Review.

Abstract:  A growing literature explores peer effects in educational outcomes (e.g., standardized test scores), but constructing student peer networks through friendship surveys or similar means may be prohibitively costly. A reasonable alternative to surveys is using shared student characteristics as a proxy for the network. In addition to being relatively inexpensive to implement, peer networks constructed from demographic data like ethnicity or gender are often strictly exogenous and constant over time, two traits that greatly simplify peer effect estimation. While researchers believe certain demographic characteristics are important for understanding peer effects, there is little evidence on the relative importance of these factors. This paper provides empirical evidence on the relative importance of peer effects by gender, ethnicity, neighborhood, bus stop, bus route, language, and country of birth for New York City elementary school classrooms. Conditional on being in the same classroom, we find that the most important student peer effects are shared bus, gender, and country of birth. In doing so, we consider identification of peer effects within the classroom setting, and tackle issues related to the 'big data' associated with large urban school systems.

"The Lunch Club: Does Exposure Increase Integration in the Lunch Line?"

with Amy Ellen Schwartz

"Is Discrimination Scarring? Effects of the September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks on New Entrants in the Labor Force"

Abstract:  In this paper, I look at whether new entrants to the labor force who are Americans of Middle Eastern, Afghan, or Pakistani descent faced scarring effects due to discrimination following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. I break from the difference-indifference framework common in the discrimination literature revolving around terror attacks, and I utilize an event-study model similar to those employed in the recession literature. This allows me to estimate not only initial effects due to discrimination, but also a period of recovery and the existence and duration of any scarring effects. I provide weak evidence of the existence of such scarring effects due to discrimination and discuss possible channels of these scarring effects. I conclude with potential avenues for refining the precision of my estimates in future work.