Abstract In criminal cases, prosecutors have the discretion to adjust arresting officers’ charges and so can offset racial disparities introduced by police. Yet prior research suggests that prosecutors instead compound earlier disparities. We investigate prosecutors’ impacts on disparities using sentencing discontinuities in North Carolina, where defendants with slightly longer criminal histories face mandatory prison. Prosecutors can sidestep these mandatory-prison laws by reducing qualifying defendants’ charges. Between 1995 and 2019, Black defendants were initially less likely — but ultimately became more likely — to benefit from charge reductions that avoid mandatory prison. This reversal is driven by arrests typically initiated by police.

Abstract How does proximity to coworkers affect training and productivity? We study software engineers at a Fortune 500 firm from 2019 to 2024, leveraging two shocks to proximity: the office closures in 2020 and the subsequent return-to-office mandates in 2022 and 2023. In both cases, co-located teams experienced bigger changes in proximity than distributed ones, facilitating difference-in-differences designs. We find that sitting near teammates increases coding feedback by 18.3% and improves code quality. Gains are concentrated among less-tenured and younger employees, who are building human capital. However, there is a trade-off: experienced engineers write less code when sitting near teammates. In national U.S. data, we find evidence that the rise of remote work has had scarring effects on young college graduates. In remotable jobs, young graduates’ unemployment rate increased relative to older graduates’ post-pandemic (2022–2024) compared to pre-pandemic (2017–2019), a pattern we do not observe in non-remotable jobs.