Research

Working Papers

  • Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Disparities in the Pretrial Process: Evidence from Local Criminal Justice Systems, with Laura Beckman, Nancy Rodriguez, and Santiago Campos-Rodriguez
    Updated December 2025

    This study examines the effects of race, ethnicity, and gender on pretrial outcomes for defendants in a large and diverse urban setting. The focal concerns framework argues justice-system decisions are based on perceptions of culpability, redeemability, public danger, and system costs. We take this theory to the data and examine the extent to which justice-system decision makers treat defendants differentially at the intersection of these dimensions during pretrial. We find that minority men typically face more punitive outcomes, while minority women typically face more lenient ones, though these results are not uniform across all our outcomes. These findings support the design of policy interventions that are likely to be more cost effective for the community and equitable for defendants.

  • Estimating the Impact of Public Policy with Unobserved Variation [PDF]
    Updated December 2025

    In recent years, many sub-state jurisdictions in the United States have introduced local economic policies previous only seen at the state or federal level. Because most publicly available data does not identify individuals at these local levels, estimating the impact of these state and federal policies is difficult as local variation will bias estimates. In this paper I propose a solution that combines an intention-to-treat approach with two-sample IV, where aggregates are sufficient for the first-stage estimation, and that identifies the local average treatment effect (LATE) of the policy. Using the recent prevalence of local minimum wage changes as a motivating case, I show this method provides statistically distinct results, when compared to standard methods, though differences are economically small and estimates are qualitatively similar to previous studies.

  • Gender Differences and Incentives in Competition: New Evidence from Tennis Grand Slam Tournaments
    Updated June 2024

    This paper examines gender differences in responsiveness to incentives by modeling players' continuation value directly using real-world betting odds and data from the 2011-2019 tennis Grand Slam tournaments. In early round match-ups men tend to exert more effort than women given the same continuation value, but when examining competitors of similar ability across the whole tournament differences in responsiveness disappear. For a 100,000 unit increase in the expected value of winning a match, men tend to increase their probability of winning by 0.9 percent, versus 0.7 percent for women. These results highlight the importance of the value of remaining in the competition verses the contemporaneous round prize in these settings.

  • The Effects of Minimum Wage Policy on Self-Employment: Evidence from the Current Population Survey [PDF]
    Updated December 2023

    This paper studies the effects of minimum wages on unincorporated self-employed workers in the US using the 1988-2020 Current Population Survey. Standard state level difference-in-differences estimates of self-employment and earnings elasticities find that increasing the minimum wage tends to decrease self-employment but has little effect on hours worked or earnings in the year following the change. Instrumental variable estimates are consistent with these findings but show large earnings gains for these workers. Using a simple model of labor market search, I show that minimum wage increases are potentially welfare improving and the welfare effects can be identified by changes in self-employment. Given this model, I show that between 1988-2020 minimum wage changes have been welfare improving on average.

Work in Progress

  • Misdemeanor Bail Reform and the Cost of Incarceration: Evidence from the ODonnell Consent Decree, with Nancy Rodriguez

    2025

  • Stock Market Participation, Liquidity, and Monetary Policy, with Lu Wang and Sarah Xiao

    2025

  • Layers of Injustice: Exploring Racial Cumulative Disparities in the Criminal Justice System”, with Laura Beckman, Nancy Rodriguez, and Santiago Campos-Rodriguez

    2025

Reports and Other Publications

  • Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Local Criminal Justice Systems [PDF] [MEDIA] with Nancy Rodriguez, Santiago Campos-Rodriguez, and Joanna Williams

    Safety and Justice Challenge, February 2025