Peer Effects in Welfare Dependence: Quasi-Experimental Evidence
利用瑞典难民安置政策产生的同伴群体外生变化，区分了同族裔联系的数量与质量，发现长期福利依赖受社区福利使用水平影响，而联系数量无关或负相关。
This paper examines peer effects in welfare use among refugees. We exploit a Swedish refugee placement policy, which generated exogenous variation in peer group composition. Our analysis distinguishes between the quantity of contacts—the number of individuals of the same ethnicity—and the quality of contacts —welfare use among members of the ethnic group. Long-term welfare dependence increases if the individual is placed in a welfare dependent community. The number of contacts is either irrelevant or negatively related to welfare receipt; not controlling for residential self-selection yields the opposite conclusion. The results are very similar across household types and in different parts of the predicted earnings distribution.