Three Essays in Applied Microeconomics

Abstract

This dissertation introduces three essays on the effects of various public policies on labor, education, earnings, and crime outcomes using quasi-experimental research designs.

In the first essay, “Legal Access to Reproductive Control Technology, Women’s Education, and Earnings Approaching Retirement," joint work with Jason Lindo, Mayra Pineda-Torres, and Hedieh Tajali, we consider the effects of historical changes in legal access to reproductive health care technology on long-run economic outcomes of women. We investigate this question using data from the Health and Retirement Study and an identification strategy leveraging variation in exposure to legal changes in access cross cohorts born in the same states. We find positive effects on educational attainment that align with prior work but are not statistically significant. We also find positive effects on working in a Social Security-covered job in women’s 20s and 30s but no evidence of positive effects on women’s earnings in their 50s.

In the second essay, “The Impact of the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act Stimulus Payments on Crime," I exploit the CARES Act stimulus checks’ sudden arrival on April 15 to measure the impact on crime. Specifically, I implement a regression discontinuity design using daily crime incident data from 47 large police departments to measure the impact on crime. I find little evidence of an effect on the overall crime rate, which disproportionately consists of minor crimes and crimes that may suffer from reporting biases. In contrast, however, the stimulus payments appear to have reduced homicides which is particularly notable because homicides have higher social costs and are better measured in official crime statistics than other types of crime. Furthermore, my estimates suggest stimulus payments reduced aggravated assaults and increased sexual offenses.

In the final essay, “The Impact of Income Shocks on Crime: Evidence from Random Assignment to Social Security Numbers," I study the effect of stimulus payments provided by the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 on crime. These laws provided a one-time payment to tens of millions of households where the timing of the payment was determined by the last two digits of a tax filer’s social security number. Using administrative arrest data from California, Florida, and Texas, I exploit the truly randomized timing of these laws to estimate the impact on criminal infractions, misdemeanors, and felonies that led to arrests. Early findings suggest the payments had a small, positive effect on overall crime in the weeks they were being disbursed. Investigating the impact on different offense types reveals heterogeneity.