【主题】Breaking Down Bullying: Empathy, Social Networks, and Adolescents
【报告人】胡沁悠（助理教授，美国德克萨斯大学圣安东尼奥分校）
【时间】 2024年6月11日周二14:00-15:30
【地点】高等研究院楼232会议室
【语言】英文
【主持人】查丹燕助理教授
【摘要】This paper examines the formation of a specific non-cognitive skill–empathy–and its role in determining bullying behavior with a focus on social networks. The analysis centers on a parent-directed empathy-fostering intervention, which successfully increased empathy levels and reduced bullying among students. To disentangle the mechanisms underlying these findings, I develop and estimate a structural model of empathy development, network formation, and bullying decisions. The analysis reveals that 32% of the observed reduction in bullying is attributed to empathy-induced alterations in social networks. Policy counterfactuals show that social network information is valuable. Notably, targeting students based on popularity can lead to up to a 7.5% further reduction in bullying compared to targeting students randomly. Moreover, targeting bullies’ friends is more effective than targeting bullies directly. This insight holds promise for refining the efficacy of anti-bullying initiatives, which often focus more on bullies, and highlights the potential of reshaping social networks to mitigate violent behavior among adolescents.
【报告人简介】Qinyou Hu received her PhD in Economics at Rice University in 2024. She will visit Aalto University as a one-year postdoctoral researcher in 2024 and join the University of Texas at San Antonio as an assistant professor in 2025. Her research areas are development economics and applied microeconomics, with a focus on topics related to family, education, and health. Her work has been published in leading academic journals such as Review of Economics of the Household, Journal of Human Capital, and Journal of Financial Stability.