Researchers have long used repeated cross sectional observations of homicide rates and sanctions to examine the deterrent effect of the adoption and implementation of death penalty statutes. The empirical literature, however, has failed to achieve consensus. A fundamental problem is that the...

Introduction: This study describes the characteristics of, services received by, and labor market outcomes of applicants with visual impairments to three state vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs. Our objective is to both document cross-state variation in VR clientele and services as well as...

This paper briefly describes and then implements the VR-ROI (Vocational Rehabilitation Return on Investment) Project's model for applicants in state fiscal year 2007 to Virginia's Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (VA DARS) and to Maryland's Division of Rehabilitation Services (MD...

This paper discusses issues associated with using readily available administrative data in estimating ROI for vocational rehabilitation services. It starts with a discussion of longitudinal outcomes data. The discussion is divided up into labor market outcomes data, other types of outcomes data,...

We provide an overview of the basic conceptual issues involved in estimating the return on investment (ROI) of state vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs. Our aim is to highlight some of the key issues in ROI evaluations, especially those associated with estimating the benefits and costs of...

Limited by the lack of data on gun ownership in the United States, ecological research linking firearms ownership rates to homicide often relies on proxy measures of ownership. Although the variable of interest is the gun ownership rate, not the proxy, the existing research does not formally...

Despite dozens of studies, research on crime in the United States has struggled to reach consensus about the impact of right-to-carry (RTC) gun laws. Empirical results are highly sensitive to seemingly minor variations in the data and model. How then should research proceed? We think that policy...

Econometric analyses of treatment response commonly use instrumental variable (IV) assumptions to identify treatment effects. Yet the credibility of IV assumptions is often a matter of considerable disagreement, with much debate about whether some covariate is or is not a "valid instrument" in...