The widespread use of illicit substances by American teenagers has attracted the interest of both the public and academic researchers. Among the various factors that people believe influence youth substance use, peer effects are identified as a critical determinant; substance use is considered a...

This paper examines peer effects in adolescent cannabis use from several different reference groups, exploiting survey data that have many desirable properties and have not previously been used for this purpose. Treating the school grade as the reference group, and using both neighbourhood fixed...

The widespread use of illicit substances by American teenagers has attracted the interest of both the public and academic researchers. Among the various factors that people believe influence youth substance use, peer effects are identified as a critical determinant; substance use is considered a...

We study social interactions in the risky behavior of best-friend pairs in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Focusing on friends who had not yet initiated a particular behavior (sex, smoking, marijuana use, truancy) by the first wave of the survey, we estimate...

"We study social interactions in the risky behavior of best-friend pairs in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Focusing on friends who had not yet initiated a particular behavior (sex, smoking, marijuana use, truancy) by the first wave of the survey, we estimate...