Using a newly constructed complete monthly panel of private and public state prisons, we ask whether private prisons impact judges' sentencing decisions in their state. We employ two identification strategies, a difference-in-difference strategy comparing court-pairs that straddle state-borders,...

Existing research on electoral sentencing cycles shows that elected judges levy longer sentences when they are up for re-election. Using newly collected sentencing data including a number of states not previously studied, we find that elected judges in several states do not appear to change...

We document the transmission of social distancing practices from the United States to Mexico along migrant networks during the early 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Using data on pre-existing migrant connections between Mexican and U.S. locations and mobile-phone tracking data revealing social...