(Job Market Paper)
This paper investigates how lethal police shootings of unarmed black individuals influence subsequent policing behavior. I combine tens of millions of traffic stop records with police shooting timings to examine changes in policing patterns and intensity following such events. Using a difference-in-differences framework and event study design, I causally identify a significant decline in police activity - as measured by traffic stop volumes - after the occurrence of a local shooting of an unarmed black subject. These reductions suggest a behavioral or institutional response by officers and departments in the aftermath of high-salience incidents. Secondary analyses provide suggestive evidence that the magnitude of these declines varies with the level of national media scrutiny that each event receives. Together, the results highlight how public attention and accountability pressures can shape day-to-day law enforcement practices and contribute to fluctuations in police effort and citizen contact.
This paper examines the impact of reduced communication costs on inmate well-being and safety in U.S. correctional facilities. Leveraging the 2014 Federal Communication Commission (FCC) mandate that imposed caps on prison phone rates, I assess whether lifting financial barriers to communication affects reported sexual assault rates. The analysis combines manually-collected data from prison telecommunications contracts with administrative records on inmate sexual assault reports. Using difference-in-differences and event study designs, I estimate the causal effects of the rate cap on inmate safety outcomes. Across specifications, I find no statistically significant effects of reduced phone costs on reported assaults. These null results suggest that while easing financial constraints on communication may enhance inmate welfare along other dimensions, phone rate reforms alone do not appear to meaningfully influence safety or reporting outcomes within correctional facilities.
This paper provides the first empirical assessment of heterogeneity in gas price elasticity across U.S. states. Using new state-specific elasticity estimates from Bates & Kim (JAE 2024), we examine how environmental factors, transportation infrastructure, and demographic characteristics shape cross-state variation in responsiveness in at-the-pump price changes. We find that states with more favorable weather and larger land areas exhibit lower elasticity, while those states with denser populations, more urbanized road networks, and larger border-area populations - particularly when the neighboring state tends to have cheaper gas - show higher elasticity. These results suggest that consumers in more urban settings and those with access to alternative fuel markets adjust their purchasing behavior more strongly. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of accounting for state-level heterogeneity when evaluating fuel demand and energy policy.