We evaluate the effect of perhaps the largest exogenous decline in a state's incarceration rate in U.S. history on local crime rates. We assess the effects of a recent reform in California that caused a sharp and permanent reduction in the state's incarceration rate. We exploit the large...

We test for an effect of Arizona's 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) on the proportion of the state's population characterized as noncitizen Hispanic. We use the synthetic control method to select a group of states against which Arizona's population trends can be compared. We document a...

We test for an effect of Arizona’s 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) on the proportion of the state population characterized as foreign-born, as non-citizen, and as non-citizen Hispanic. We use the synthetic control method to select a group of states against which the population trends of...

This paper investigates whether employer sanctions for hiring undocumented workers introduced by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) adversely affected the hourly earnings of Latino workers in the southwestern United States. We exploit the staggering of the sanctions and employee...

This paper presents a test of the hypothesis that employers in suburban locations are more likely to discriminate against African Americans than are employers located in central cities. Using a difference-in-difference framework, we compare central-city/suburban differences in racial hiring...

This paper improves on past longitudinal estimates of the union earnings effect by using a sample of workers for whom the error in measuring changes in union status is minimized. The author uses a sample of workers displaced by plant closings from the 1994 and 1996 Current Population Survey...

This analysis of data from the 5% Census Public Use Microdata Sample shows that residence in a low-employment growth area had a strong negative effect on both the probability of being employed and the probability of being active (defined as being either employed or in school) among youths in the...