Across the basic seven Index I crime categories, the strongest evidence of a statistically significant effect would be for aggravated assault, with 11 of 28 estimates suggesting that RTC laws increase this crime at the .10 confidence level. An omitted variable bias test on our preferred Table 8a...

Our preferred panel data regression specification (the "DAWmodel") and the Brennan Center (BC) model, as well as other statistical models by Lott and Mustard (LM) and Moody and Marvell (MM) that had previously been offered as evidence of crime-reducing RTC laws, now only generate statistically...

We use newly digitized records from the U.S. Post Office to study how strengthening state capacity affects public service delivery and innovation in over 2,800 cities between 1875-1905. Exploiting the gradual expansion of a major civil service reform, cities with a reformed postal office...

We link personnel records of the federal civil service to census data for 1907-1921 to study the segregation of the civil service by race under President Woodrow Wilson. Using a difference-in-differences design to compare the black-white wage gap around Wilson's presidential transition, we find...

We study the link between the choice of rule-based public contracts and political hazards using the municipal bond market. While general obligation bonds are serviced from all municipal revenue streams and offer elected officials financial flexibility, revenue bonds limit the discretion that...

This paper combines personnel records of the U.S. federal government with census data to study how shocks to the gender composition of a large organization can persistently shift gender norms. Exploiting city-by-department variation in the sudden expansion of female clerical employment driven by...

Is there consumer demand to support Black-owned businesses? To explore, we investigate the impact of a new feature on a large online platform that made the race of a set of Black business owners salient to customers. We find that this feature substantially increased demand for Black-owned...

There is a consensus that the proportion of suicides committed with a firearm is the best proxy for gun ownership prevalence. Cerqueira et al. (2108) exploit the socioeconomic characteristics of suicide victims in order to develop a new and more refined proxy. It is based on the fixed effects of...

Donohue and Levitt (2001) presented evidence that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s played an important role in the crime drop of the 1990s. That paper concluded with a strong out-of-sample prediction regarding the next two decades: "When a steady state is reached roughly twenty...

Donohue and Levitt (2001) argue that the legalization of abortion in the United States in the 1970s played an important role in explaining the observed decline in crime approximately two decades later. Foote and Goetz (2005) challenge the results presented in one of the tables in that original...