Anne Toft Hansen

Research areas and contributions

Anne’s work combines rigorous empirical research with policy-relevant analysis. A central focus of her research is inequality in access to and completion of higher education, including how social background, peer environments, and expectations affect individuals’ educational decisions.

She has conducted research on peer effects, family influences, and gender differences in educational choices, as well as on the role of grading and information in shaping labor market outcomes. Her work also covers early childhood interventions and the quality of daycare, contributing to the understanding of how early environments affect children’s development and later educational outcomes.

Her research has been published in leading international journals such as Review of Economics and Statistics and Journal of Labor Economics, and she collaborates with international scholars on projects related to inequality of opportunity and educational decision-making.

Methods

Anne Toft Hansen primarily works with quantitative methods and applied econometrics. She has extensive experience using large-scale Danish administrative register data and employs causal inference methods, including quasi-experimental designs such as regression discontinuity. Her work often combines multiple data sources, including survey and longitudinal data.

Background

She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Copenhagen (2019) and is a Senior Researcher at VIVE – The Danish Centre for Social Science Research. She has been affiliated with VIVE since 2009, initially as a student assistant and from 2019 as a researcher.

She has been a visiting researcher at Princeton University, Cornell University, and the University of California, San Diego, and is actively engaged in international research collaborations within education and labor economics.