A recurring theme in evaluations of Swedish residential youth care is that treatment is often unplanned. In this paper, I show that planned treatment is strongly positively associated with treatment outcomes. In the short term, teenagers with planned treatment are less likely to experience a...

We identify hiring discrimination against former juvenile delinquents in a direct way. To this end we conduct a field experiment in the Belgian labour market. We find that labour market discrimination is indeed a major barrier in the transition to work for former juvenile delinquents. Labour...

A wide range of services provided by the public sector are credence goods, i.e., services for which the producer has private information whether a certain treatment is needed or not. This paper studies how ownership affects the incentives for producers to reveal such information to public...

We study the interplay between parental and peer socialization in shaping criminal behavior among adolescents. We develop a simple cultural transmission model where parents affect how society influences their children's decisions. The model predicts that parental and peer socialization are...

Based on a theoretical framework on custodial and non-custodial sentencing, the paper provides econometric tests on the effectiveness of police, public prosecution and courts. Using a unique dataset covering German states for the period 1977-2001, a comprehensive system of criminal prosecution...

This study examines the impact of children's age within grade on school victimization in elementary school. Identification of age effects relies on the instrumental variables approach drawing on official school entry age rules based on children's month of birth. The empirical analysis uses the...

Two important determinants of crime rates in economic theories of crime are deterrent effects and legal income opportunities. For at least two reasons, youth crimes do not fit into this picture since: 1) most youths do not work 2) deterrent effects, in terms of punishment, are non existent or...

Using a nationally-representative panel data set of U.S. high school students (AddHealth data) that contains a relatively large sample of siblings and twins, the paper investigates the impacts of gun availability at home and individual drug use on robbery, burglary, theft and damaging property...

Although there is a sizeable literature of the effect of private school attendance on academic student outcomes, there is a dearth of studies of the impact of school sector on nonacademic outcomes. Using a rich data set, we analyze the impact of Catholic school attendance on the likelihood that...

Dating violence is a serious public health concern both per se and because victimization in the young adult years can be a precursor to more severe incidents of domestic violence later, in the context of cohabitation or marriage. To date, no quantitative studies have examined dating violence...