Highlighted Publications




 

Fadlon, Fugleholm, and Nielsen (2025) ask whether income losses after a spouse’s death worsen survivors’ mental health. They use Danish administrative data from 1995–2018, including death records, prescription drug purchases, and household income information for the full population. They find that survivors sharply increase their use of mental-health medications after the death, with take-up doubling in the first month (about +10.5 percentage points) and remaining about 10 pe

Papanicolas et al. (2025) study how premature mortality varies by race across U.S. states and what that implies for unrealized Medicare benefits. They ask whether Black and White adults differ in mortality before age 65. They use CDC Vital Statistics and CDC WONDER population data linked with Medicare Beneficiary Summary Files for 2012 and 2022. They find that premature mortality rose 27.2% overall (243 to 309 deaths per 100,000). Black adults had higher rates in both years,

Brouillette, Jones, and Klenow (2024) examine how large the Black–White welfare gap is in the United States when welfare is measured across multiple life dimensions. They analyze life expectancy, incarceration, consumption, leisure, and inequality using CDC mortality data, BJS incarceration statistics, CEX consumption data, and CPS labor data from 1984–2022. They find that Black welfare was about 40% of White welfare in 1984 and 59% in 2022, showing progress but leaving a lar

Benson, Li, and Shue (2025) study whether subjective “potential” ratings help explain why women are promoted less often than men. They use personnel data from 29,809 management-track employees in a large North American retail firm and track performance, potential ratings, promotions, and turnover. They find that women receive higher performance ratings but lower potential ratings, and that potential ratings predict promotions more strongly than performance ratings. Difference

Carpenter, Feir, Pendakur, and Warman (2025) examine whether nonbinary and transgender people experience earnings penalties compared to cisgender workers, and what explains those gaps. They use restricted 2021 Canadian Census data linked to tax records, covering earnings from 2019–2020 for adults ages 25–59. They find large earnings disparities relative to cisgender men. Nonbinary people assigned female at birth earn about 44–49 percent less in basic models and about 27 perce

Dragan (2026) examines whether improving housing quality reduces health care use and spending among low-income residents. She asks whether a large New York City housing remediation policy—the Alternative Enforcement Program—led to changes in health care utilization. Using Medicaid enrollment and claims data from 2007–2019 linked to building-level housing violation records, she applies a regression discontinuity design around the program’s eligibility cutoff. She finds no evid

Ager, Goni, and Salvanes (2024) study whether gender-biased technological change—specifically the adoption of milking machines—pushed young rural women out of farming and improved their long-term economic outcomes. They use linked Norwegian administrative registry data covering about 725,000 women and men born in rural municipalities, combined with municipality-level agricultural census data on milking machine adoption. They find that milking machines displaced young women fr

Bucher-Koenen, Hackethal, Koenen, and Laudenbach (2024) examine whether financial advisors treat male and female clients differently when providing investment advice. They ask whether client gender affects fees and product recommendations, independent of actual client characteristics. Using administrative data from nearly 27,000 advisor–client meetings at a large German bank, along with client surveys, advisor surveys, and experiments, they find systematic gender differences.

Dupas et al. (2025) examine whether men and women are treated differently when presenting research in economics seminars. They ask whether presenter gender affects how often and how negatively audience members interrupt speakers. They analyze detailed data on thousands of seminars, job talks, and conference presentations, combining human-coded observations with machine learning analysis of audio recordings. The authors find that women receive about 10–20 percent more interrup

Uzzi et al. (2025) examine whether neighborhood conditions shaped by past redlining and present-day racialized economic segregation are associated with fatal opioid overdose deaths. They analyze census-tract–level data from Chicago, combining Cook County Medical Examiner overdose records with historical redlining maps and contemporary census data from 2017–2019 and 2020–2022. They find that neighborhoods experiencing high levels of disadvantage in the past and/or present had

Evans and Christensen (2025) ask whether banning legacy preferences in college admissions changes the racial and socioeconomic composition of enrolled students, and why effects differ across institutions. They analyze policy documents and enrollment data from seven case studies where legacy preferences were eliminated, including public systems and selective private colleges. Using before-and-after comparisons and difference-in-differences style estimates, they find mixed resu

Zhong (2024) asks whether third-grade test-based retention improves or harms students’ long-term outcomes. He examines administrative data from Texas public schools linked to college enrollment records and state earnings data, following students from third grade into their mid-20s. Using a regression discontinuity design around the reading test promotion cutoff, he finds that retention briefly raises test scores but increases absenteeism, violent behavior, and juvenile crime.

Cohodes and Pineda (2025) ask whether attending Massachusetts charter schools affects students’ college preparation, enrollment, and degree completion, and whether these effects differ between urban and nonurban schools. They analyze randomized admission lottery data from Massachusetts charter schools between 2002 and 2014, linked to state education records and National Student Clearinghouse college data. They find that urban charter schools substantially increase test scores

Hankins, Momeni, and Sovich (2025) ask whether trade tariffs raise consumer borrowing costs by changing auto loan terms, not just vehicle prices. They examine millions of U.S. auto loans from Regulation AB II data, comparing loans from captive auto lenders (owned by manufacturers) to non-captive lenders before and after the 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs. They find that captive lenders increased interest rates by about 26 basis points after the tariffs, roughly a 10 percent

Cunningham and Gillezeau (2025) ask whether granting collective bargaining rights to police unions increases civilian deaths caused by law enforcement. They analyze county-level data from 1959–1988, combining historical records on police bargaining laws with Vital Statistics data on deaths due to legal intervention, disaggregated by race. Using an event-study design, they find that the adoption of “duty to bargain” laws leads to a substantial increase in civilian deaths over

Wang et al. (2026) ask whether state adoption of broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE) increases SNAP participation, and how much of that increase comes from newly eligible versus already eligible households. They analyze state-level SNAP participation from 1996–2016 using administrative SNAP Quality Control data combined with state policy and economic data. Using a difference-in-differences design that allows effects to vary over time and across states, they find that B

Schneider and Harknett (2026) examine whether state and local paid sick leave laws affect workers who are not legally covered through spillovers within large, multi-state firms. They ask whether firm-level exposure to paid sick leave mandates leads companies to extend paid sick leave to workers in non-mandate locations. They analyze linked employer–employee survey data from the Shift Project, combined with administrative data on firm locations and mandate coverage. They find

Anders and Rafkin (2025) examine whether expanding SNAP income-eligibility limits increases program use among households that were already eligible. Using administrative SNAP Quality Control data from 1996–2016, they track state-level changes in eligibility thresholds and their effect on participation. They find that a 10-percentage-point increase in the income limit raises take-up among always-eligible households by about 1–2 percent. For every newly eligible person who enro

Bowden, Rodriguez, and Weingarten (2025) examine whether relaxing high-school grading standards reduces student effort and learning. They use statewide administrative data from North Carolina (2013–2019), linking exact birthdates, course grades, absences, and ACT scores. They find that the shift to a more lenient 10-point scale mechanically raised GPAs by about 0.13 points (roughly 4.8%) but caused meaningful declines in effort: absences rose 22% (about 1.3 days) and numeric

Crema (2025) investigates whether charter school openings increase racial segregation within traditional public school classrooms. She analyzes North Carolina administrative data covering 97 charter openings from 1997–2015, along with classroom-level records showing the racial composition of students in grades 1–5. She finds that segregation in nearby public schools rises as soon as a charter opening is announced, before any students transfer. Classroom segregation increases

This study asks whether court-appointed attorneys achieve different outcomes for low-income defendants based on whether they share the same race. Using administrative data on more than 17,000 misdemeanor cases in Travis County, Texas, the authors examine quasi-random attorney assignment to compare results for Black and White defendants. They find that Black defendants represented by White attorneys are 14–16 percent more likely to have their charges dismissed and 15–26 percen

The study asks which neighborhoods in the United States give children the best chances of rising out of poverty. Using Census and IRS data on more than 20 million children born between 1978 and 1983, the researchers link childhood Census tracts to adult outcomes such as income, incarceration, and teen birth rates. They find large neighborhood gaps: for children from families earning $27,000, adult household income differs by about $12,850 across nearby tracts. Quasi-experimen

The authors ask whether state recreational cannabis legalization reduces long-standing racial disparities in the criminal legal system. Using national data from 2007–2019 on arrests, prison admissions, hospitalizations, crimes, and police staffing, they track outcomes for White and Black adults before and after legalization. They find large drops in cannabis possession arrests (down 62% for White adults and 51% for Black adults) and cannabis sales arrests (down 44% and 49%).

The study asks whether providing free universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-old children in disadvantaged Arab communities in Israel improves long-term educational and social outcomes. Using administrative data that follow nearly 85,000 children from early childhood through young adulthood, the authors analyze test scores, high school completion, college enrollment, juvenile crime, and early marriage. They find substantial gains: high school graduation rises by 2.8 percentage