Research

Working Papers

"Voter ID Laws Impact Turnout Through Registration" 

The proliferation of voter ID laws across the US has had an ambiguous impact on turnout rates among registered voters, despite fear from civil-rights advocates that these laws would suppress turnout. I advance the literature on voter ID laws by studying how Virginia’s 2014 law impacted both turnout and registration rates, finding significant and durable declines in both measures. To do this, I gather data on registered voters who lack DMV records and track changes in voting precincts over time to identify areas of the state where more people are likely to be impacted by the voter ID law. My findings suggest that the decline in overall turnout rates in voting precincts with higher shares of voters likely to lack valid ID is driven almost entirely by declines in registration rates. Identifying this suggests that voter ID laws have an important deterrent effect that prevents new voters from participating in the electoral process. I also consider the role of countermobilization against new voting restrictions and find evidence that more Democratic parts of the state saw smaller effects from the voter ID law.

"Reduced Flexibility in Voting Differentially Impacts Black Voters" with Daniel B. Jones

This paper explores how access to in-person early voting impacts turnout, overall and by race. We study ease of access in two senses: spatial proximity to early voting sites and length of the early voting period. We draw on data from North Carolina from 2010-2014. First, using a spatial regression discontinuity design, we find that spatial proximity is associated with increased use of early voting. This increases overall turnout of Black voters, but not white voters, as white voters close to an early voting site substitute away from election day voting. Second, we combine our regression discontinuity design with a difference-in-differences approach to assess the impacts of a 2013 North Carolina law reducing the early voting period by a week. We find that the law specifically reduced turnout of Black voters.  Early voting declined for both impacted Black and white voters, but white voters simply shifted to election day voting.

"Disenfranchised and Defunded: Shelby County v. Holder and Racial Disparities in Government Finances" (Draft forthcoming)

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) caused dramatic changes in the political economy of the United States South, leading to greater equality between white and non-white citizens across a range of political and economic outcomes. In 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a core provision of the VRA that had enabled federal oversight of elections in states with a history of discriminatory voting practices, leading to a wave of voter suppression laws that decreased the political participation and political power of racial minorities across the South. Using data from the US Census Bureau, I document that this decline in political power for minority citizens has increased racial inequality in state-level public spending. First, I document that states that were previously covered by federal oversight under the VRA have decreased intergovernmental transfers to local governments. Using a triple-difference design, I then show that this decrease in transfers is concentrated among cities with larger non-white populations. This decline in transfers is not compensated by an increase in federal funds or local taxes, leading to a decrease in overall spending.

Publications and Accepted Papers

"Disparate Racial Impacts of Shelby County v. Holder on Turnout" with Stephen B. Billings, Daniel B. Jones, and Ying Shi (Journal of Public Economics, 2024)

"Improving Citizen-initiated Police Reform Efforts Through Interactive Design: A Case Study in Allegheny County" with Yongsu Ahn, Eliana Beigel, Collin Griffin, Sera Linardi, Blair Mickles, Emmaline Rial (Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization, 2022)

Selected Works in Progress

"Tax Burden and Preferences for Public Expenditure: Evidence from California's Property Tax System"

Local governments are often constrained in their ability to set taxes and spending levels, creating a challenge for policy makers to raise adequate funds for local public goods. I propose and test a model for how housing values within a jurisdiction determine preferences for different property tax structures and public goods. Differences in the distribution of housing wealth help determine policy makers’ decisions in whether to raise revenue through either a flat or a progressive tax on property. To test the model, I first demonstrate that California school districts with higher shares of white, wealthy, and highly educated voters are disproportionately likely to propose and raise revenue via flat taxes. Differing levels of support across groups of voters causes the introduction of a flat tax option to distort previous spending levels sustained under a progressive system. I then turn to precinct-level turnout data on individual tax elections and find that flat taxes receive significant opposition from areas with lower home values. My findings suggest that switching from a progressive tax to a flat tax shifts families with low home values to oppose increases in public spending and exacerbates gaps in public goods spending across low- and high-wealth jurisdictions.

"Revisiting the Impacts of Voter ID Laws Using New Difference-in-difference Methods"

The study of voter ID laws is complicated by the staggered timing of adoption across states and lack of data on which voters are likely to be impacted by the new restriction. To ameliorate these issues, I apply the latest methods for estimating event study and difference-in-difference models with staggered timing to a combination of survey and administrative data on voting and registration. 

"Local Politics and Migration Choice" with Jiangnan Zeng

This paper examines the role of local politics in residential sorting and its implications for political polarization. Using mayoral elections between Democratic candidates and non-Democratic candidates, coupled with individual-level migration data in North Carolina, we explore the impact of local official elections and subsequent policy changes on the migration decisions of political partisans. Preliminary results show that the election of a Democratic mayor boosts the overall population of municipalities in North Carolina. This increase is attributed to a decrease in out-migration and an uptick in in-migration among Democrats.