This paper examines the effect of attending the flagship state university on the earnings of 28 to 33 year olds by combining confidential admissions records from a large state university with earnings data collected through the state's unemployment insurance program. To distinguish the effect of attending the flagship state university from the effects of confounding factors correlated with the university's admission decision or the applicant's enrollment decision, I exploit a large discontinuity in the probability of enrollment at the admission cutoff. The results indicate that attending the most selective state university causes earnings to be approximately 20% higher for white men.

This paper examines race and police use of force using data on 1.6 million 911 calls in two cities, neither of which allows for discretion in officer dispatch. Results indicate White officers increase force much more than minority officers when dispatched to more minority neighborhoods. Estimates indicate Black (Hispanic) civilians are 55 (75) percent more likely to experience any force, and five times as likely to experience a police shooting, compared to if White officers scaled up force similarly to minority officers. Additionally, 14 percent of White officers use excess force in Black neighborhoods relative to our statistical benchmark. (JEL H76, J15, K42, R23)

This paper assesses the importance of school and neighborhood peers in shaping educational achievement, adolescent misbehavior, and adult crime. Using cohort variation within Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, we focus on the impact of peers whose parents have been arrested, which is strongly and independently predictive of worse outcomes. Results indicate that a 5 percentage point increase in school peers linked to parental arrest reduces educational achievement by 0.016 standard deviations and increases adult arrest rates by 5%. Additional evidence indicates that peer effects are primarily driven by interactions in schools rather than in neighborhoods.

This paper examines whether giving large cash transfers to financially distressed people causes them to avoid bankruptcy. A comparison of Florida Lottery winners who randomly received $50, 000 to $150, 000 to small winners indicates that such transfers only postpone bankruptcy rather than prevent it, a result inconsistent with the negative shock model of bankruptcy. Furthermore, the large winners who subsequently filed for bankruptcy had similar net assets and unsecured debt as small winners. Thus, our findings suggest that skepticism regarding the long-term impact of cash transfers may be warranted. © 2011 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A large and growing literature has documented the importance of peer effects in education. However, there is relatively little evidence on the long-run educational and labor market consequences of childhood peers. We examine this question by linking administrative data on elementary school students to subsequent test scores, college attendance and completion, and earnings. To distinguish the effect of peers from confounding factors, we exploit the population variation in the proportion of children from families linked to domestic violence, who have been shown to disrupt contemporaneous behavior and learning. Results show that exposure to a disruptive peer in classes of 25 during elementary school reduces earnings at age 24 to 28 by 3 percent. We estimate that differential exposure to children linked to domestic violence explains 5 percent of the rich-poor earnings gap in our data, and that each year of exposure to a disruptive peer reduces the present discounted value of classmates’ future earnings by $80,000. (JEL I21, I26, J13, J24, J31)

Despite strong demand for attending high schools with better peers, there is mixed evidence on whether doing so improves academic outcomes. We estimate the cognitive returns to high school quality by comparing the college entrance exam scores of students in China who were barely above and below high school admission thresholds. Results indicate that while peer quality improves significantly across all sets of admission cutoffs, the only increase in performance occurs from attending tier 1 high schools. Further evidence suggests the returns to high school quality are driven by teacher quality rather than peer quality or class size.