Research

Publications

Police Violence and Civic Engagement (with Desmond Ang)

American Political Science Review, 2023.

Roughly a thousand people are killed by American law enforcement officers each year, accounting for more than 5% of all homicides. We estimate the causal impact of these events on civic engagement. Exploiting hyperlocal variation in how close residents live to a killing, we find that exposure to police violence leads to significant increases in registrations and votes. These effects are driven entirely by Black and Hispanic citizens and are largest for killings of unarmed individuals. We find corresponding increases in support for criminal justice reforms, suggesting that police violence may cause voters to politically mobilize against perceived injustice.

Working Papers

Do Pedestrian Stops Deter Crime? Evidence from Reforming “Stop and Frisk” (with Jeffrey Fagan)

Revision requested at American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

Over 3.5 million pedestrians are stopped by police in the United States every year. We explore whether investigative pedestrian stops deter criminal activity by leveraging a lawsuit that sharply reduced stop rates in New York City without altering police presence.  Our difference-in-differences strategy compares crime trends between neighborhoods with similar historical crime rates but differing stop rates. Neighborhoods that experienced twice the reduction in stops did not exhibit differential increases in felonies and violent misdemeanors, major felonies, shootings, killings, or a cost-weighted crime measure over the five years following the reform. Our estimates are precise, ruling out a 1.5% increase in felonies and violent misdemeanors. In contrast, police surges that increased both officer presence and stops reduced major felonies, highlighting the importance of officer presence but not stop activity for crime deterrence.

[Formerly, Stopped by the Police: The Effect of Reforming “Stop and Frisk” on Crime and High School Engagement  (with Jeffrey Fagan) ]

Research in Progress

Police Stopping Decisions (with Lily Morrell & Jeff Fagan)

Policing Minor Offenses and the Early-life Trajectory of Urban Men: Evidence from Court, School, and Tax Records (with Benjamin Goldman)

Academic and Athletic Mentorship: A Randomized Trial of Multi-Faceted Mentorship (with Noam Angrist)

Can Emergency Financial Assistance Prevent Financial Distress? Randomized Evidence from Funeral Assistance in Chicago (with Mary Kate Batistich) [AEA Registry, PAP]

Mentoring Across Lines of Difference: Randomized Evidence on Comprehensive Mentorship for Students At Risk of Dropping Out of High School (with Bill Evans and Sarah Kroeger) [AEA Registry] 

Supporting Pathways out of Poverty: Randomized Evaluation of Mobility Mentoring (with Larry Katz and Liz Engle) [AEA Registry] 

Seeing is Believing? A Cognitive View of Program Take-up (with Olga Stoddard and Patrick Turner) [AEA Registry]

Does Social Emotional Learning Complement Academic Learning? Randomized Evidence from the "Boys and Girls Club" (with Mike Kofoed)  [AEA Registry]

Empowerment as Engagement: Randomized Evidence on School-based Girls Empowerment Curriculum (with Mary Kate Batistich)  [AEA Registry]

Elevating Families: Randomized Evidence on Goal-oriented Case Management for Low-income Parents and their Children (with Tyler Giles) [AEA Registry]