Boys Named Sue: Disruptive Children and Their Peers

A large Florida school district, school years 1996-97 through 1999-2000; names, classroom assignment, behaviour records and test scores

US elementary and middle school students.

An unusual instrumental variable — boys given names most commonly given to girls become differentially disruptive on transition to middle school, while showing no name-behaviour relationship in elementary school. That within-child timing pattern is what makes the instrument credible. The outcomes are administrative disciplinary records and test scores.

Behaviour problems are associated with increased peer disciplinary problems and reduced peer test scores. Classroom disruption has negative consequences for classmates' academic performance, identified independently of the family-violence instrument used by Carrell and Hoekstra.

Low to medium. The instrument is a naming convention rather than a family characteristic; the residual concern is whether parental naming choices proxy for something heritable, which the elementary-to-middle-school timing test partly addresses.

Converges with Carrell & Hoekstra 2010 and Carrell, Hoekstra & Kuka 2018 on a wholly different identification strategy — three independent instruments, same conclusion, which is why classroom order is treated in this archive as an established causal input rather than a folk belief.