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From friends to ‘family’: schools, neighborhoods, and gang recruitment

This paper examines how gang-related criminal behavior spreads through extended family and peer networks, using newly linked Swedish administrative data covering over 18,000 individuals with confirmed gang affiliation. Within-family correlations reveal intergenerational transmission of criminal behavior where parental criminal history accounts for only half of a broader latent "crime-family"...

The scar of political conflict: evidence from tear gas deployments in Hong Kong

This study examines how exposure to political violence reshapes market behavior by leveraging Hong Kong’s 2019-2020 protests. Exploiting local variation in tear gas deployment–the primary crowd-control weapon marking sites of violent confrontations–we use a difference-in-differences approach comparing housing prices in buildings within 50 meters of tear gas sites to those 50-1,000 meters away,...

The labour market effects of crime victimisation

Using a novel dataset encompassing all crime reports in Brazil and employing a matched differences-in-differences design, we find that victims of assault experience a 7-10% reduction in labor market participation, with persistent and permanent effects evident even five years after the incident. Victims are less likely to search for jobs and significantly more likely to be absent from work. Overall...

Does Distance from Home Matter in Prison? Effects on Visitation and Recidivism

This paper studies how the distance between prison and an incarcerated individual’s home affects their likelihood of recidivism. Leveraging a unique dataset covering more than 20,000 incarcerated individuals and over 200,000 prison visits, I exploit quasi-random variation in home-to-prison distance generated by facility assignment rules. I find that a 100-mile increase in placement distance raises...

Does Management Matter? Evidence from Indigent Defense in Texas

The majority of felony cases in the United States involve indigent clients represented by publicly financed attorneys. In this paper, we examine the effects of efforts to improve representation for economically disadvantaged defendants through the adoption of managed indigent defense offices (MIDs) in the state of Texas. MIDs impose a layer of oversight and accountability on attorneys providing...

Understanding Criminal Record Penalties in the Labor Market

This paper studies the earnings and employment penalties associated with a criminal record. Using a large-scale dataset linking criminal justice and employer-employee wage records, we estimate two-way fixed effects models that decompose earnings into worker’s portable earnings potential and firm pay premia, both of which are allowed to shift after a worker acquires a record. We find that firm pay...

Audit of God: Hometown Connections and Building Damage in the Sichuan Earthquake

This study documents how corruption can result in large-scale welfare consequences by exacerbating the damage from catastrophic events. Using an original dataset of 1,050 buildings from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China, I show that buildings constructed when local officials had hometown connections to their supervisors were 75% more likely to collapse than were those built when officials had...

Income-Based Fines: Evaluating Rationales for Finnish Speeding Penalties

We evaluate rationales for income-based speeding fines. Such fines are famously applied in Finland, where a $250 offense for a low-income speeder can cost $100,000 for the rich. We consider four potential policy goals—externality mitigation, redistribution, equal compliance, and proportional punishment—using linked Finnish administrative data and an original survey. First, using a “job-loss”...

Criminal Records, Family Formation and Violence Against Women

Brown Bag Seminar Industrial Economics