Traditional models of politician behavior predict complete or partial policy convergence, whereby electoral competition compels partisan politicians to choose positions more moderate than their most-preferred policies. Alternatively, if politicians cannot overcome the inability to make binding...

Why do wars occur? We exploit a natural experiment to test the longstanding hypothesis that leaders declare war because they fail to internalize the associated costs. We test this moral hazard theory of conflict by compiling data on the 9,210 children of 3,693 US legislators who served in the...

This paper uses data on bill sponsorship and cosponsorship in the U.S. House of Representatives to estimate gender differences in cooperative behavior. We employ a number of econometric methodologies to address the potential selection of female representatives into electoral districts with...

We model a procedural reform aimed at restoring a proper role for the minority in the confirmation process of judicial nominations in the U.S. Senate. We analyze a proposal that would call for nominations to the same level court to be collected in periodic lists and voted upon individually with...

We study vote trading among U.S. Congress members. By tracking roll-call votes within bills across five legislatures and politicians' personal connections made during the school years, we document a propensity of connected legislators to vote together that depends on how salient the bill is to...

We investigate the informativeness of hygiene signals in online reviews, and their effect on consumer choice and restaurant hygiene. We first extract signals of hygiene from Yelp. Among all dimensions that regulators monitor through mandated restaurant inspections, we find that reviews are more...

We designed and fielded a survey of New York and Pennsylvania firms to study the impacts of New York's 2018 Paid Family Leave policy on employer outcomes. We match each NY firm to a comparable PA firm and use difference-in-difference models to analyze within-match-pair changes in outcomes. We...

This paper reports the results of a large, school-level randomized controlled trial evaluating a set of three informational interventions for young people choosing high schools in 473 middle schools, serving over 115,000 8th graders. The interventions differed in their level of customization to...

How effective are restrictions on mobility in limiting COVID-19 spread? Using zip code data across five U.S. cities, we estimate that total cases per capita decrease by 20% for every ten percentage point fall in mobility. Addressing endogeneity concerns, we instrument for travel by residential...

Recent policy discussions have proposed government-guaranteed jobs, including for youth. One key potential benefit of youth employment is a reduction in criminal justice contact. Prior work on summer youth employment programs has documented little-to-no effect of the program on crime during the...