This paper explores whether and why a maternal child penalty to earnings would emerge even without changes in employment and hours worked. Using a matched event study design, we trace monthly changes in determinants of wages (job performance, human capital accumulation, and promotions). Data come from a usefully unusual setting with required multiyear employment and detailed personnel data: the US Marine Corps. Mothers’ job performance initially declines, and gaps in promotion grow through 24 months postbirth. Fathers’ physical fitness performance drops somewhat but recovers. These patterns lead mothers to earn relatively lower wages, even absent changes in employment postbirth.

We document that judges’ political affiliations are strongly associated with the level of judicial penalties levied against companies. For example, Republican-appointed judges impose larger fines for hiring illegal immigrants, while Democrat-appointed judges impose larger fines for pollution- and environment-related violations. Time-series variation suggests that political partisanship, not fixed ideological differences, drives these findings. The differences become amplified when higher-court judicial vacancies exist and in the months before national elections. Our findings highlight the importance of political polarization for U.S. companies and illustrate how judicial composition can affect firms’ incentive to avoid violating laws connected to partisan issues.

This paper develops a new framework for understanding when and how migrants shape culture, applying it to the Confederate diaspora—a small migrant group that left a large cultural imprint. Southern Whites that migrated after the Civil War played a pivotal role in spreading Confederate symbols and racial norms across the U.S. by the early 20th century. Their far-reaching influence stemmed from two key conditions: (i) an ideological intensity rooted in their experiences of slavery, secession, and military defeat and (ii) access to malleable power structures during westward expansion and post-war reconciliation. These conditions enabled them to transmit Confederate culture to both kin and non-Southern neighbours and to expand their reach by mobilising civil society organisation and leveraging positions of authority. They shaped policies and institutions that helped entrench racial norms and inequalities in labour markets, housing, and the criminal justice system. Our findings provide empirical foundations for understanding how migrants can transform local culture, rather than merely assimilate.

In April 2016, the European Union adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), significantly expanding privacy protections for personal data handled by firms. I examine the regulation’s impact on U.S. firms’ internal information quality (IIQ) and operational efficiency. Although privacy regulations target one subset of firms’ information assets (i.e., personal data), they may spur broad improvements in firms’ information governance practices and systems, resulting in higher quality information available for decision-making and, by extension, more efficient operations. Using a difference-in-differences design, I find that U.S. firms with European operations (i.e., treated firms) exhibit improvements in IIQ around the adoption of the GDPR. Furthermore, although the GDPR’s regulatory burden is overall costly to firms, GDPR-induced improvements in IIQ contribute positively to operational efficiency. These findings highlight that privacy regulation can act as a catalyst for firms to improve IIQ, yielding operational benefits that may partially offset the regulation’s costs. Data Availability: All data are available from public sources discussed in the text.

I use a unique setting in the municipal bond market to examine the impact of compliance auditing on bond yields. SEC Rule 15c2-12 requires bond issuers to provide annual financial and operating disclosures to investors over the life of the bonds. Due to concerns of noncompliance, Louisiana passed a state law requiring auditors to test for compliance with Rule 15c2-12. I find that bond yields in the municipal bond market decrease by 21 basis points after the audit law for previously noncompliant issuers in Louisiana. I find similar results when I separately examine the primary and secondary markets. I also find that previously noncompliant issuers file 75.2 percent more annual disclosures after the audit law, suggesting that the audit law improved compliance with Rule 15c2-12. Overall, my findings inform policymakers and regulators on the role of auditing over compliance with disclosure regulation as a mechanism to protect investors.

Election results act as powerful signals, shaping social behavior in ways that can be dramatic and even violent. This article shows how racial violence in the post-Reconstruction U.S. South was tied to the local performance of the anti-Black Democratic Party in presidential elections. Using a regression discontinuity design based on close presidential vote shares, we find that Southern counties where Democrats lost the popular vote between 1880 and 1900 were nearly twice as likely to experience Black lynchings in the following four years. Despite no corresponding changes in local office holding, these defeats were salient among local elites. We show that Southern newspapers, closely aligned with the Democratic Party, amplified narratives of Black criminality in the aftermath of Democratic losses. Such accusations were, in turn, frequently invoked by lynch mobs. These findings point to the strategic use of racial violence by Democratic elites, foreshadowing the institutionalized vote suppression of Jim Crow.

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We discuss how to estimate the interplay between genes (nature) and environments (nurture), with an empirical illustration of the moderating effect of school starting age on one’s genetic predisposition towards educational attainment. We argue that gene–environment (G×E) studies can be instrumental for (i) assessing treatment effect heterogeneity, (ii) testing theoretical predictions, and (iii) uncovering mechanisms, thereby improving understanding of how (policy) interventions affect population subgroups. Empirically, we find that being old-for-grade and having a higher genetic propensity for education benefits children on assessment tests as they progress through school. In this setting, families appear to increase genetic inequalities while schools seem to reduce them.

Does police oversight increase crime? Studies examining this relationship often rely on major scandals as shocks, but the simultaneous effect of public outrage on officer behavior and crime contaminates the results. Using a framework distinguishing oversight and outrage, we identify two events that increased oversight but elicited no public reaction. We find that despite a subsequent decline in reported misconduct, these oversight increases likely did not significantly impact crime or officer activity, suggesting oversight can reduce misconduct without increasing crime. However, a major policing scandal likely increased crime but did not increase arrests and decreased stops and uses of force.