Policymakers and researchers are increasingly interested in using experimental methods to inform the design of social policy. The most common approach, at least in developed countries, is to carry out large-scale randomized trials of the policies of interest, or what we call here policy...

Although non-experimental studies find robust neighborhood effects on adults, such findings have been challenged by results from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) residential mobility experiment. Using a within-study comparison design, this paper compares experimental and non-experimental...

There is growing concern that improving the academic skills of disadvantaged youth is too difficult and costly, so policymakers should instead focus either on vocationally oriented instruction for teens or else on early childhood education. Yet this conclusion may be premature given that so few...

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration assigned housing vouchers via random lottery to public housing residents in five cities. We use the exogenous variation in residential locations generated by MTO to estimate neighborhood effects on youth crime and delinquency. The offer to relocate...

There is growing concern that improving the academic skills of disadvantaged youth is too difficult and costly, so policymakers should instead focus either on vocationally oriented instruction for teens or else on early childhood education. Yet this conclusion may be premature given that so few...

We examine the relationship between neighborhood poverty rates and juvenile criminal behavior using data from a unique randomized housing-mobility experiment. We find that providing families with the opportunity to move from high- to low-poverty neighborhoods has substantial effects on the...

In 1982, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling suggested in an influential article in the Atlantic Monthly that targeting minor disorder could help reduce more serious crime. More than 20 years later, the three most populous cities in the U.S. - New York, Chicago and, most recently, Los Angeles -...