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Title: Expanding Choices, Shifting Peers: Evidence from Indian Schools

Abstract:

Exposure to out-group peers in childhood shapes trust, cooperation, and shared norms. It has implications for social cohesion and equal opportunity. Schools are a primary setting where such contact forms, and parental choice in local school markets determines who meets whom. This study builds on the traditional school-choice framework to allow households to value peer composition, in addition to distance, and perceived quality. I use geocoded administrative records linked to household settlements to build a village–school-year panel for over 350K schools in India over a 13-year period. Identification comes from a national policy that required a public school within one kilometer of each habitation. Villages that did not meet this threshold before the reform saw more school openings, which provides plausibly exogenous variation in local entry. Results show that when a new public school opens, caste-based segregation in schools rises, even after controlling for distance and observed school traits. The results show that local school-supply expansion interacts with parental preferences so that each additional school becomes a new margin for same-group sorting, narrowing children鈥檚 exposure to out-group peers.

Title: Social Reform through Force: Union Army Presence and Black Education in the US South

Title: Temptation and Persuasion 

A draft is available on Alexander's website at