Abstract This paper describes and implements a simple partial solution to the most common problem in applied microeconometrics: estimating a linear causal effect with a potentially endogenous explanatory variable and no suitable instrumental variables. Empirical researchers faced with this...

Since the 1980s, the BC Ministry of Education has offered funding to support the language development of students who speak non-standard dialects of English. In practice, the students who are supported by this funding are almost exclusively Aboriginal, and English as a Second Dialect (ESD)...

In the well-known `critical mass' model of social interactions, aggregate behaviour exhibits multiple equilibria if the influence of group behaviour on individual behaviour exceeds some fairly high threshold. I demonstrate that this property depends on an implicit assumption that the relevant...

A number of studies have indicated that peer smoking is a highly influential factor in a young person's decision to smoke. However, this finding is suspect, because the studies often fail to account for selection and simultaneity bias. This paper develops an econometric model of youth smoking...

We use data on elementary-school students to investigate how the home language and other characteristics of a student's same-grade schoolmates influence that student's academic achievement. We exploit the availability of multiple cohorts of data within each school to control for endogenous...

We use data on students in grades 4–7 in the Canadian province of British Columbia to investigate the effect of having disabled peers on value-added exam outcomes. Longitudinal data for multiple cohorts of students are used together with school-by-grade-level fixed effects to account for...

We examine the contribution of differences in school environments to the gap in education outcomes between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. We find both substantial school-level segregation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students and a substantial gap in test scores. Conventional...

This chapter outlines a new approach to measuring peer influence on the choice of a young person to smoke cigarettes. The methodology is based on estimating an equilibrium discrete choice model in which the relative benefit to smoking is increasing in the fraction of peers who smoke. In contrast...