To assess whether near-poor parents' job mobility is reduced due to the non-portability of employer-provided health insurance--an effect termed job lock--the authors examine data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation for 1996 and 2001, years bracketing the introduction of the State...

In this paper, we analyze employer demand for ex-offenders. We use data from a recent survey of employers to analyze not only employer preferences for offenders, but also the extent to which they check criminal backgrounds in the presence of very imperfect information about the job applicants...

This paper presents a test of the hypothesis that employers in suburban locations are more likely to discriminate against African-Americans than employers located in central cities. Using a difference-in-difference framework, we compare central city-suburban differences in racial hiring outcomes...

It is generally believed that the increased incidence of homelessness in the US has arisen from broad societal factors - changes in the institutionalization of the mentally ill, increases in drug addiction and alcohol usage, etc. This paper reports on a comprehensive test of the alternate...

This article assesses whether international migration from Mexico affects the marital, fertility, schooling, and employment outcomes of the Mexican women who remain behind by exploiting variation over time as well as across Mexican states in the demographic imbalance between men and women. I...

In August 2006, the Italian government released one-third of the nation's prison inmates via a national collective pardon. We test for a discontinuous break in national crime rates corresponding to the mass release. We also test for the effect of the return of the incarceration rate to its...

We evaluate the effect of perhaps the largest exogenous decline in a state's incarceration rate in U.S. history on local crime rates. We assess the effects of a recent reform in California that caused a sharp and permanent reduction in the state's incarceration rate. We exploit the large...

We study whether the forced removal of undocumented immigrants from the United States increases violent crime in Mexican municipalities. Using municipal panel data on homicide rates matched with annual deportation flows from the United States to Mexico, we assess whether municipalities with...