Welcome to Hikaru's website.
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
I'm an applied microeconomist, mainly focusing on the Economics of Education, Economics of Crime, and Labor Economics.
I completed a PhD at University College London (UCL), Department of Economics, in November 2025.
I am on the 2026-27 job market from UCL.
My job market paper is "When Trouble Travels: Peer Effects of Criminal Exposure in Schools." [pdf]
Abstract: First contact with the criminal justice system peaks in early adolescence, when children spend much of their time with peers at school. While a large literature documents that peers shape children's development and behavior, much less is known about the consequences of exposure to schoolmates with a criminal record. Using administrative data linking criminal justice and education records for nearly all students in England, I study whether and to what extent criminal behavior spreads within schools through exposure to juvenile offenders. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous timing of school transfers by students with a criminal record, I find that exposure increases a student's probability of starting a criminal career by 12.9% within four months, with effects persisting for at least three years. Exposure also lowers educational achievement; most of this decline is accounted for by exposed students' subsequent criminal behavior. These peer effects account for 5% of the total social cost of youth crime in England. Because the effects vary substantially across school characteristics, a simulation shows that reassigning transfer offenders to other schools within three miles could reduce peer-induced crime by 36%.
[Best paper award at Essen Health Conference 2026]
[Presented at: National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, European Association of Young Economists, Centre for Economic Performance-Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago Conference on the Economics of Crime and Justice, Essen Health Conference, European Society for Population Economics, Workshop on the Economics of Crime for Junior Scholars, Workshop on Labour and Family Economics, Kyoto Summer Workshop on Applied Economics, Royal Economic Society, Workshop on the Economics of Risky Behavior, European Association of Labour Economists Conference, Newcastle University, The Network Science and Economics Conference, University College London, Applied Econometrics Conference, Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, Sophia University, Workshop on Education Economics and Policy, World Congress of the Econometric Society, and Otaru University of Commerce]
My latest CV is available below and here.
hikaru.kawarazaki@ifs.org.uk
