Published / Forthcoming Articles
Felony Disenfranchisement and Voter Turnout: Randomized Trials in Iowa and Washington (with JJ Naddeo, Neel Sukhatme)
Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, we conducted large scale randomized controlled trials in Iowa and Washington aimed at increasing voter turnout among newly enfranchised individuals with past felony convictions. Alongside national and grassroots partners, we designed and implemented experiments intended to ascertain the effectiveness of alternative outreach mechanisms, including targeted mailers and digital ads. We fail to detect statistically significant or economically meaningful effects on voter registration or turnout; most observed effects are precise nulls. The absence of measured impact may be attributed to low digital engagement with online ads or extensive voter outreach by local partners prior to the study. Our evidence highlights the importance of context in voter outreach efforts, as the political and legal environment in Iowa and Washington differed significantly from other regions where similar interventions had previously shown success.
Accepted at the Northwestern University Law Review, Forthcoming
Felony Financial Disenfranchisement (with Neel Sukhatme, Gaurav Bagwe)
Individuals with prior felony convictions often must complete all terms of their sentence before they regain voter eligibility. Many jurisdictions include legal-financial obligations (LFOs) — fines, fees, and/or restitution stemming from convictions — in the terms of the sentence. Twenty-eight states, governing over 182 million Americans, either directly or indirectly tie LFO repayment to voting privileges, a practice we call felony financial disenfranchisement.
Proponents of felony financial disenfranchisement posit that returning citizens must satisfy the financial obligations stemming from convictions to restore themselves as community equals. Moralism aside, others claim low rates of electoral participation among those with felony convictions imply such disenfranchisement is inconsequential.
In this Article, we challenge both of these claims. To do so, we draw upon new empirical and contextual evidence from Florida, which disenfranchises more returning citizens than any other state. We rely on data and natural experiments from a non-partisan, non-profit advocacy group that we launched called Free Our Vote.
The Article illustrates how felony financial disenfranchisement creates uncertainty around voter eligibility, which likely deters many otherwise qualified voters with felony records from participating. We also measure, for the first time, the direct impact of felony financial disenfranchisement on voter participation, using a debt relief program implemented by Free Our Vote. Specifically, we compare electoral participation between registered voters whose LFOs were eliminated by Free Our Vote against virtually identical debtors who did not benefit from our program. We find our debt relief program increased voter turnout by approximately 26% among this group during the 2020 election.
Vanderbilt Law Review
Media Coverage:
Crime and the Mariel Boatlift (with Michael Packard)
We describe crime attributable to the Mariel Boatlift, the 1980 Cuban refugee crisis that increased Miami's population by nearly 10%. Using synthetic control methods to match Miami with cities that exhibit similar pre-intervention crime patterns, we find the phenomenon comparatively increased property crime and murder rates; we also document weaker but suggestive relative growth in violent crime. Compositional features of the newcomers partially drive results; the disproportionately young, male Cubans' characteristics highly correlate with illicit activity. However, the degree of prior incarceration and psychiatric institutionalization likely explains the majority of the observed effects. Given the group's unique composition and the absence of rigorous screening, it likely constitutes the worst observed migration event in terms of public safety in US history. The Marielitos bear little resemblance to other groups of newcomers. Hence, it would be imprudent to use crime connected with the 1980 event we study to inform immigration policy.
International Review of Law & Economics
Creditor Courts (with Neel U. Sukhatme)
One of the largest institutional creditors in the United States is perhaps the most unexpected: the criminal court system. Each year, creditor courts collect more than $15 billion in revenues from criminal defendants. These fees are the lifeblood of the modern criminal legal system.
In this Article, we shed new light on the legal and economic framework under which myriad stakeholders operate in these creditor courts. By analyzing new survey data from clerks of court and 102 contracts with debt collection agencies in Florida, we provide general insights how creditor courts distort incentives and teem with conflicts of interest. These inefficiencies regularly disrupt the financial stability of the judiciary as well as the lives of the largely indigent criminal defendants who remain indebted to this system.
As we show, legislators, clerks of court, and the judiciary writ large subject criminal defendants to unconstrained coercion through the use of so-called “user fees.” Leveraging campaign finance data and publicly available litigation material, we also find suggestive evidence of possible quid pro quo rewards between collection agencies assigned to collect debt on behalf of courts and the clerks of court tasked with administering them. We argue that state constitutional reforms that eliminate creditor courts and mandate courts be funded from general state revenues are the only meaningful ways to permanently redress the social costs generated by criminal monetary sanctions.
The Ohio State Law Journal
Patent Pending: Do Patents Serve as Quality Signals to Consumers? (with Neel U. Sukhatme)
Patent law encourages inventors to label their products as "patented," to mark their legal status and potentially secure monetary damages from infringing competitors. In this paper, we empirically examine whether such labels might have a separate and direct impact on consumers, by affecting how they view patented products and influencing their purchasing behavior.
We develop and conduct two experiments to isolate the impact of patent status on consumer behavior. In the first study, an online randomized experiment, we demonstrate how increasing the salience of patent status heightens consumers' beliefs that products are innovative and of high quality. We also reveal consumers’ surprisingly sophisticated understanding of the patent process and what being patented means. Despite this informed perspective, consumers are not more inclined to buy patented products.
To determine if these results hold in a real-world setting, we conduct a field experiment at a small retail pharmacy chain. Using scanner data spanning over five years, we find no evidence consumers respond to increased patent salience. Our collective results suggest that while consumers view patented products as more innovative and of higher quality, these positive attributes do not necessarily translate into heightened purchasing behavior.
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies
Works in Progress
The Long-Run Impacts of Parental Incarceration (with Neel U. Sukhatme)
The Economic and Mobility Effects of Driver's License Suspensions (with Neel U. Sukhatme and Camila Rodrigues Gomes)
The Ripple Effects of Legal Aid in the Eviction Context (with Neel U. Sukhatme)
Dormant Projects
Asset Forfeiture: New Data
Research to date on asset forfeiture has found authorities collect revenue by circumventing civil liberties safeguards. This activity seems to target minorities in fiscally constrained communities. Using new data on asset forfeiture, I present evidence the literature relied on variables subject to substantial missing records. Prior research relied on confiscated property values that require police to accurately appraise items like cars and weapons. This finding calls into question related policy and scholarly work. To better frame research, I provide summary statistics and seizure patterns capturing the number of forfeiture cases. Given the influence of related research in recent policy changes, I also revisit parameter estimates with the new data and measure of seizures prone to less error. I find prior research potentially overstated the degree to which law enforcement exploit loopholes in laws intended to protect property owners. Likewise, I fail to observe evidence law enforcement disproportionately seize property in debt-ridden communities.
Policing for Profit and Asset Forfeiture: Evidence from the Equitable Sharing Suspension
In January 2015, the Department of Justice (DOJ) temporarily suspended a federal asset forfeiture program that grants local law enforcement the ability to retain property confiscated from suspected criminals. This tool enables authorities to circumvent state level requirements to deposit forfeiture revenue into general funds. Using difference- in-differences, I exploit the DOJ’s decision — in conjunction with state forfeiture laws — to measure the importance of federal financial incentives tied to property seizure. Contrary to implications from preexisting legal and empirical research, I find the purported loss of forfeiture revenue did not reduce confiscations or encourage other revenue generating activity.