This paper examines how changes in employers' access to job applicants' criminal histories affect ex-offender recidivism. We use extensive state administrative data on individual criminal histories spanning the 2010-2012 Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) Reform, widely...

This paper uses increases in felony larceny thresholds as a negative shock to felony conviction probability to examine the impact of punishment severity on criminal behavior. In the theft value distribution between old and new larceny thresholds ("response region"), higher thresholds cause a 2...

This paper combines two components of the US Current Population Survey to characterize the relationship between job displacement and sectoral mobility for long-tenured workers over the 1996-2019 period: (1) the cross-sectional Displaced Worker Survey and (2) the 16-month longitudinal design of...

This paper compares the distortionary impact of larceny theft across different product markets, characterizing such crime as a 'hidden tax' on producers or consumers. We estimate the size of this tax and how it is affected by exogenous changes in larceny rates driven by the enactment of higher...

This paper estimates the impact of occupational licensing at the extensive margin (existence) and intensive margin (qualifications) on the occupational mobility of US workers. Using 2015-2022 Current Population Survey data on worker occupational choices matched to licensing-policy data, I show...

We investigate the impact of rising educational attainment on wage inflation and the equilibrium (non-inflationary) rate of unemployment. Rising educational attainment may reduce wage pressures by shifting the composition of the labor force towards groups with lower equilibrium unemployment...

We examine the impact of subsidized housing on homelessness using the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the largest place-based housing program in the United States. To generate quasi-experimental variation in housing placements, we exploit a discontinuous increase in the amount of tax...

Many regard the 2010-2012 Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) Reform as a national model to improve ex-offenders' labor market outcomes. This reform prohibits most employers from inquiring about an individual's criminal history on the initial job application (the "ban the...

This paper examines how changes in employers' access to job applicants' criminal histories affect ex-offender recidivism. We use extensive state administrative data on individual criminal histories spanning the 2010-2012 Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) Reform, widely...