Tarjei Havnes

Broadband internet: An information superhighway to sex crime?

Does internet use trigger sex crime? We use unique Norwegian data on crime and internet adoption to shed light on this question. A public program with limited funding rolled out broadband access points in 2000-2008, and provides plausibly exogenous variation in internet use. Our instrumental variables and fixed effect estimates show that internet use is associated with a substantial increase in reported incidences of rape and other sex crimes. We present a theoretical framework that highlights three mechanisms for how internet use may affect reported sex crime, namely a reporting effect, a matching effect on potential offenders and victims, and a direct effect on crime propensity. Our results indicate that the direct effect is non-negligible and positive, plausibly as a result of increased consumption of pornography.

Baby Booming Inequality? Demographic Change and Inequality in Norway, 1967-2004

We demonstrate how age-adjusted inequality measures can be used to evaluate whether changes in inequality over time are because of changes in the age structure. In particular, we explore the hypothesis that the substantial rise in earnings inequality since the early 1980s is driven by the large baby boom cohorts approaching the peak of the age{earnings pro le. Using administrative data on earnings for every Norwegian male over the period 1967{2004, we nd that the impact of age adjustments on the trend in inequality is highly sensitive to the method used:while the most widely used age-adjusted inequality measure indicates that the rise in inequality in the 1980s and 1990s is indeed driven partly by the baby boom, a new and improved age-adjusted measure indicates the opposite, namely that the rise in inequality was even larger than what the inequality measures unadjusted for age reveal.

Robust Inequality of Opportunity Comparisons: Theory and Application to Early-Childhood Policy Evaluation

This paper develops a criterion to assess equalization of opportunity that is consistent with theoretical views of equality of opportunity. We characterize inequality of opportunity as a situation where some groups in society enjoy an illegitimate advantage. In this context, equalization of opportunity requires that the extent of the illegitimate advantage enjoyed by the privileged groups falls. Robustness requires that this judgment be supported by the broadest class of individual preferences. We formalize this criterion in a decision-theoretic framework and derive an empirical condition for equalization of opportunity based on observed opportunity distributions. The criterion is used to assess the effectiveness of child care at equalizing opportunity among children, using quantile treatment effects estimates of a major child care reform in Norway. Overall, we find strong evidence supporting equalization of opportunity.

Early child care and cognitive development: Evidence from an assignment lottery

Young children are thought to be vulnerable to separation from their primary caregiver. This raises concern about whether early childcare enrollment may harm child development. We use childcare assignment lotteries to estimate the effect of enrollment at age 1–2 on cognitive development in Norway. Estimates show significant gains in language and mathematics at age 6–7 and a substantial drop in scores below publicly set thresholds for low performance. Across subsamples, we find a pattern of stronger effects on underperforming groups. We find little support for childcare quality or family income as drivers of our results.

Equalization of Opportunity: Definitions, Implementable Conditions and Application to Early-Childhood Policy Evaluation

This paper develops a criterion to assess equalization of opportunity that is consistent with theoretical views of equality of opportunity. We characterize inequality of opportunity as a situation where some groups in society enjoy an illegitimate advantage. In this context, equalization of opportunity requires that the extent of the illegitimate advantage enjoyed by the privileged groups falls. Robustness requires that this judgement be supported by the broadest class of individual preferences. We formalize this criterion in a decision theoretic framework, and derive an empirical condition for equalization of opportunity based on observed opportunity distributions. The criterion is used to assess the effectiveness of child care at equalizing opportunity among children, using quantile treatment effects estimates of a major child care reform in Norway.