PhD Seminar: Shinsuke Nakagami

Peer Effect of Psychological Distress in the Workplace

Abstract: This study examines peer effects on psychological distress within a workplace, using employee networks constructed from the organisation's structure. Psychological distress is measured using the PHQ-4 by the Australian Workplace Index, and peer effects are modelled with a CES function following Boucher et al. (2024), allowing them to depend on the distribution of peers’ distress rather than on the peer average assumed in the standard linear-in-means (LIM) model. The results suggest a positive peer effect of depression in the workplace. Also, the estimation results indicate that the effect is driven more strongly by highly distressed peers than by the average distress level of all peers.