The Ku Klux Klan reached its heyday in the mid-1920s, claiming millions of members. In this paper, we analyze the 1920s Klan, those who joined it, and the social and political impact that it had. We utilize a wide range of newly discovered data sources including information from Klan membership...

This paper develops a model of social interactions and endogenous poverty traps. The key idea is captured in a framework in which the likelihood of future social interactions with members of one's group is partly determined by group-specific investments made by individuals. I prove three main...

The literature on statistical discrimination shows that ex-ante identical groups may be differentially treated in discriminatory equilibria. This paper constructs a dynamic model of statistical discrimination and explores what happens to the individuals who nonetheless overcome the initial...

In previous research, a substantial gap in test scores between White and Black students persists, even after controlling for a wide range of observable characteristics. Using a newly available data set (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study), we demonstrate that in stark contrast to earlier...

Police use of force - particularly lethal force - is one of the most divisive issues of the twenty-first century. To understand the nexus of race, criminal justice, and police brutality, academics and journalists have begun to amass impressive datasets on Officer-Involved-Shootings (OIS). I...

We introduce a model of two-sided statistical discrimination in which worker and firm beliefs are complementary. Firms try to infer whether workers have made investments required for them to be productive, and simultaneously, workers try to deduce whether firms have made investments necessary...

This study examines the impact on student achievement of high-dosage reading tutoring for middle school students in New York City Public Schools, using a school-level randomized field experiment. Across three years, schools offered at least 130 hours of 4-on-1 tutoring based on a guided reading...

This study examines the impact on student achievement of implementing management training for principals in traditional public schools in Houston, Texas, using a school-level randomized field experiment. Across two years, principals were provided 300 hours of training on lesson planning,...

This paper provides the first empirical examination of the impact of federal and state "Pattern-or-Practice" investigations on crime and policing. For investigations that were not preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force, investigations, on average, led to a statistically significant...

We present the results of a novel early childhood intervention in which disadvantaged 3-4-year- old children were randomized to receive a new preschool and parent education program focused on cognitive and non-cognitive skills (CogX) or to a control group that did not receive preschool...