Hello, I am a 5th year PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at Columbia University. I will be a visiting student at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business for the 2022-2023 academic year.
I will be on the job market during the 2022-2023 academic year, and I am a 2022 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow.
My primary research interests are labor, policing, and crime.
I have a BA in Economics and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. Prior to my doctoral studies, I worked as an RA for Robert LaLonde and as a data scientist constructing and analyzing the data behind the Citizens Police Data Project.
This paper studies the effect of pretrial electronic monitoring (EM) as a middle alternative to both pretrial release and detention (jail) in Cook County, Illinois. EM often involves a defendant wearing an electronic ankle bracelet that tracks their movement and aims to deter pretrial misconduct. Using the quasi-random assignment of bond court judges, I estimate the effect of EM vs. release and EM vs. detention on pretrial misconduct, case outcomes, and future recidivism. I develop a novel method for the semi-parametric estimation of marginal treatment effects in ordered choice environments, allowing me to construct relevant treatment effects. Relative to release, EM increases new cases pretrial due to bond violations while reducing new cases for low-level crimes and failures to appear in court. Relative to detention, EM increases low-level pretrial misconduct but improves defendant case outcomes and reduces cost-weighted future recidivism. Finally, I bound EM's crime-reduction effect; I find that while EM is likely an effective substitute for pretrial detention, it is not clear that EM prevents enough high-cost crime to justify its use relative to release, particularly for low-level defendants.
Publications and Accepted Papers
- “The Black-White Recognition Gap in Award Nominations” [Accepted at Journal of Labor Economics] (with Nayoung Rim, Andrea Kiss, and Bocar Ba)
- “Peer Effects in Police Use of Force” [Conditionally Accepted at American Economic Journal: Economic Policy] (with Justin Holz and Bocar Ba)
- “The Role of Officer Race and Gender in Police-Civilian Interactions in Chicago”, Science 2021, Vol. 371 (with Bocar Ba, Dean Knox, Jonathan Mummolo)
- “Disparities in Police Award Nominations: Evidence from Chicago”, AEA Papers and Proceedings 2020, Vol. 110: 447-51 (with Nayoung Rim and Bocar Ba)
Working Papers
- “The Effect of Minority Peers on Future Arrest Quantity and Quality” [Revise and Resubmit at American Economic Journal: Applied Economics]
- “The Effect of Police Oversight on Crime and Allegations of Misconduct: Evidence from Chicago” [Revise and Resubmit at The Review of Economics and Statistics] (with Bocar Ba)
- “Who are the Police? Descriptive Representation in the Coercive Arm of Government” [Revise and Resubmit at American Political Science Review] (with Bocar Ba, Jacob Kaplan, Dean Knox, Mayya Komisarchik, Rachel Mariman, Jonathan Mummolo, and Michele Torres)
- “Police Officer Assignment and Neighborhood Crime” [NBER Working Paper No. 29243] (with Bocar Ba, Patrick Bayer, Nayoung Rim, and Modibo Sidibe)
Works in Progress
- “Deterrence, Income Support and Optimal Crime Policy” (with W. Bentley MacLeod)
- “Who “Benefits” from Bail Reform? Evidence from Chicago” (with Bocar Ba, Patrick Bayer, Jenny Jiao, and Nayoung Rim)
- “Community Ties and Police Use of Force” (with Bocar Ba and Nayoung Rim)
- “Good Intentions but Bad Policy?” (with W. Bentley MacLeod)
- Spring 2022: TA for Sokbae (Simon) Lee, Introduction to Econometrics (Undergrad), Columbia University [4.55/5, 4.6/5, 5/5; Evaluations]
- Spring 2020: TA for Nima Haghpanah, Game Theory (Undergrad), Teaching Assistant, Columbia University [N/A due to COVID / switch to virtual]
- Fall 2019: TA for Brendan O’Flaherty, Economics of Race (Undergrad), Teaching Assistant, Columbia University [4.64/5; Evaluations]
