Search Results
Working Paper
Do Minimum Wages Really Increase Youth Drinking and Drunk Driving?
Adams, Blackburn, and Cotti (ABC) found that increases in minimum wages were positively related to drunk driving?related traffic fatalities for those ages 16 to 20. The hypothesized mechanism for this relationship?increased alcohol consumption caused by minimum wage?induced income gains?remains empirically unexplored. Using data from two national behavioral surveys and an identification strategy identical to ABC, we find little evidence that an increase in the minimum wage leads to increases in alcohol consumption or drunk driving among teenagers. These results suggest a much smaller set of ...
Working Paper
The Effect of Undocumented Immigration and Border Enforcement on Crime Rates along the U.S.-Mexico Border
In the 1990s, the U.S. border led the nation in the decline of property-related crimes, while violent crime rates fell twice as fast in the U.S. as in the median border county. This paper asks how changes in undocumented immigration and border enforcement have played a role in generating these divergent trends. We find that while migrant apprehensions are correlated with a greater incidence of violent crime, they are not systematically associated with higher rates of property crime. Border patrol enforcement is associated with lower property crime rates but higher violent crime. ...
Working Paper
Punishment and Crime: The Impact of Felony Conviction on Criminal Activity
This paper uses increases in felony larceny thresholds as a negative shock to felony conviction probability to examine the impact of punishment severity on criminal behavior. In the theft value distribution between old and new larceny thresholds (“response region”), higher thresholds cause a 2 percent increase in the average larceny value within 120 days of enactment. However, within five years of enactment, response region average larceny values and rates decline 2 percentand 13 percent, respectively, in low-wage areas. Thus, under certain market conditions, smaller expected penalties ...
Working Paper
Can Reputation Discipline the Gig Economy? Experimental Evidence from an Online Labor Market
Just as employers face uncertainty when hiring workers, workers also face uncertainty when accepting employment, and bad employers may opportunistically depart from expectations, norms, and laws. However, prior research in economics and information sciences has focused sharply on the employer?s problem of identifying good workers rather than vice versa. This issue is especially pronounced in markets for gig work, including online labor markets, where platforms are developing strategies to help workers identify good employers. We build a theoretical model for the value of such reputation ...
Working Paper
Information Production, Misconduct Effort, and the Duration of Corporate Fraud
We develop and test a model linking the duration of financial fraud to information produced by auditors and analysts and efforts by managers to conceal the fraud. Our empirical results suggest fraud termination is more likely in the quarter following the release of audited financial statements, especially when reports contain explanatory language, indicating auditors? observable signals reduce fraud duration. Analyst attention increases the likelihood of fraud termination, but the marginal effect beyond the first analyst is negative, possibly due to free riding and herding behavior impairing ...
Working Paper
Black Mayors and Crime
Local elections are often contested on the grounds of public safety, but do elected officials have any power to curb crime? Black mayors have particular interest in the issue because Black communities are victimized by high levels of crime and fragile police community relations. Using data on elections of first-time Black mayors, I find that police forces add more Black officers, a finding that is especially true for mayors with executive authority. Officers arrest 48 fewer potential Black offenders per 10,000 Black residents for crimes where they have the ability to exercise discretion, a ...
Working Paper
The effect of changing employers’ access to criminal histories on ex-offenders’ labor market outcomes: evidence from the 2010–2012 Massachusetts CORI Reform
Many regard the 2010?2012 Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI)Reform as a national model to improve ex-offenders? labor market outcomes. This reform prohibits most employers from inquiring about an individual?s criminal history on the initial job application (the ?ban the box? reform), and reduces employers? access to an applicant?s criminal record (the record-access reform). Using the CORI Reform as a natural experiment and a unique large confidential dataset linking individuals? CORI records with their unemployment insurance quarterly wage records, we examine the impact ...
Working Paper
Financial regulations and price inconsistencies across bitcoin markets
We document systematic differences in bitcoin prices across 11 different markets representing 26% of global bitcoin trade volume. These differences must ? due to the identical nature of all bitcoin ? result from characteristics of markets themselves. We examine differences across the markets and find that those which do not require customer identification for establishing an account are more likely to deviate from representative market prices than those which do. This implies that standard financial regulations, specifically know-your-customer regulations, can have a non-negligible impact on ...
Speech
The rewards of an ethical culture
Remarks at the Bank of England, London.
Speech
Opening remarks at reforming culture and behavior in the financial services industry: workshop on progress and challenges
Opening Remarks at Reforming Culture and Behavior in the Financial Services Industry: Workshop on Progress and Challenges, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York City.