Peer Effects in Alcohol Consumption: an Empirical Study

Student: Tiurin Fedor

Supervisor: Andrey Bremzen

Educational Programme: Joint HSE-NES Undergraduate Program in Economics (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 10

Year of Graduation: 2019

This paper studies peer effects in alcohol consumption among adult people with alcohol use disorders. I use a brand-new hand-picked dataset of medical records of the male and female patients of the only narcological clinic in Nizhegorodskaya Oblast. A grid map is used to define peer groups. I address possible endogeneity of peer effects by introducing an instrument and estimating 2SLS model. The issues associated with the strength of the instrument are addressed using estimators robust to the weak instruments. I find significant positive peer effects for males and no peer effects for females. The results are robust to changing the grid and excluding small peer groups. Additional variables of interest (such as parents' occupation, education, personal trauma) also affect an individual's level of addiction.

Full text (added May 29, 2019)

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