• AEA in the news
  • March 7, 2018

The Wall Street Journal features AEJ: Applied article on sexual assault

Oklahoma Sooners fans cheer on their team at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., in September 2005.

Karimala/Bigstock

The Wall Street Journal featured a paper that appeared in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics about the correlation between college party culture and incidents of sexual assault on campus. The paper, by researchers Isaac Swensen, Jason Lindo, and Peter Siminski, analyzed crime data on a particularly festive day on many college campuses — football game day. They found that on days of Division 1 football games, reports of rape among young women increased 28 percent. The correlation was even stronger for home games, which were linked to a 41 percent increase in rape reports. The AEA also interviewed Swensen about the research in January. That audio interview can be heard here, accompanied by an edited transcript.