Ongoing Projects
We’re Building Something Here: Reducing Gun Violence in Baltimore’s Western District (with Max Kapustin, Cristina Layana, Jeremy Biddle, Brian Wade, Ben Struhl and Anthony Braga)
Improving Police Performance: An Experimental Evaluation of the Policing Leadership Academy (with Dylan Fitzpatrick, Max Kapustin, Kailey White and Anthony Braga)
The Effects of Providing Postsecondary Educational Opportunities to Prison Inmates: Evidence from a Randomized Trial (with Jordan Hyatt and Sarah Tahamont)
Re-Visiting the Effect of Vocational Training in Prisons: A Randomized Evaluation of The Last Mile (with Anthony Braga, Ben Struhl, Sarah Tahamont, Britte van Tiem and Laura Mutis)
Working Papers
Can Gun Violence Be Deterred at Low Cost? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in New York City (draft)
Crime and the City: The Computational Turn in Research and Its Future
Perils and Pitfalls in the Use of Synthetic Control Methods to Study Public Safety Interventions (draft)
Substance Abuse Facilities and Local Crime
Journal Articles (Refereed)
Can Brighter Street Lighting Reduce Street Crime at Scale? Evidence from Philadelphia (with Alyssa Mendlein, Maya Moritz, Brian Wade and John MacDonald), Criminology & Public Policy (link)
Professional Motivations in the Public Sector: Evidence from Police Officers (with Felipe Goncalves), Forthcoming, American Economic Review (draft)
Did Violence Against Asian-Americans Rise in 2020? Evidence from a Novel Approach to Measuring Racially-Motivated Attacks (with Alex Knorre and Britte van Tiem), Forthcoming, Justice Quarterly (draft)
Cities and Policing for Crime Prevention: Refocusing the Agenda (with Anthony Braga and John MacDonald), The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science (link)
Place-Based Approaches to Reducing Violent Crime Hot Spots: A Review of the Evidence on Public Health Approaches (with John MacDonald, David Mitre Becerril and Alex Knorre), Aggression and Violent Behavior (link)
Investments in Policing and Community Safety, Annual Review of Criminology (link)
Understanding Vaccine Hesitancy in U.S. Prisons: Perspectives from a Statewide Survey of Incarcerated People (with Emily Greberman, Erin Kerrison and Jordan Hyatt) Vaccines (link)
Does Proactive Policing Really Increase Major Crime? Accounting for an Ecological Fallacy (with David Mitre Becerril and Morgan Williams Jr.), Journal of Comments and Replications in Economics (link)
An Emerging Racial Disparity in U.S. Traffic Fatalities (with Maxim Massenkoff and Aartik Sarma), JAMA Surgery (link)
Crime and Disorder Trends Associated with the Introduction of Overdose Prevention Centers in New York City (with Brandon del Pozo and David Mitre Becerril), JAMA: Network Open (link)
Comparing Risks of Firearm-Related Death and Injury Among Young Adult Males in Selected US Cities to Wartime Service in Iraq and Afghanistan (with Brandon del Pozo, Alex Knorre and Michael Mello), JAMA: Network Open (link)
The Minimum Legal Drinking Age and Crime Victimization (with Ben Hansen and Rachel Ryley), Journal of Human Resources (link)
No Ground Truth? No Problem: Improving Administrative Data Linking Using Active Learning and a Little Bit of Guile (with Sarah Tahamont, Zubin Jelveh, Melissa McNeill, Shi Yan and Ben Hansen), PLos ONE (link)
Activity-Adjusted Crime Rates Show That Public Safety Worsened in 2020 (with Maxim Massenkoff), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (link)
Can Deterrence Persist? Long-Term Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of Street Lighting (with David Mitre Becerril, Jason Lerner and Sarah Tahamont), Criminology & Public Policy (link)
Police Force Size and Civilian Race (with Ben Hansen, Emily Weisburst and Morgan Williams Jr.), American Economic Review: Insights (link)
Can Precision Policing Reduce Gun Violence? Evidence from "Gang Takedowns" in New York City (with Mike LaForest and Jacob Kaplan), Journal of Policy Analysis & Management (link) (pre-print)
Street Light Outages, Public Safety and Crime Attraction (with Jacob Kaplan and Mike LaForest), Journal of Quantitative Criminology (link)
Reducing Crime Through Environmental Design: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of Street Lighting in New York City (with Ben Hansen, Jason Lerner and Lucie Parker), Journal of Quantitative Criminology (link)
Ambient Lighting, Use of Outdoor Spaces and Perceptions of Public Safety: Evidence from a Survey Experiment (with Jacob Kaplan), Forthcoming, Security Journal (link) (pre-print)
How Many Complaints Against Police Officers Can Be Abated By Incapacitating a Few "Bad Apples?" (with Jacob Kaplan), Forthcoming, Criminology & Public Policy (link)
Testing Public Policy at the Frontier: The Effect of the $15 Minimum Wage on Public Safety in Seattle (with David Mitre Becerril), Forthcoming, Criminology & Public Policy (link)
Measuring Marginal Crime Concentration: A New Solution to an Old Problem (with Jacob Kaplan and Maria Cuellar), Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency (link)
Dude, Where's My Treatment Effect? Errors in Administrative Data Linking and the Destruction of Statistical Power in Randomized Experiments (with Sarah Tahamont, Zubin Jelveh, Shi Yan and Ben Hansen), Journal of Quantitative Criminology (link)
Immigration Enforcement, Crime and Demography: Evidence from the Arizona Legal Workers Act (with Monica Deza),
Criminology & Public Policy (link)
More Sneezing, Less Crime? Health Shocks and the Market for Offenses (with Shooshan Danagoulian and Monica Deza),
Journal of Health Economics (link)
More Cops, Fewer Prisoners? (with Jacob Kaplan), Criminology & Public Policy (link)
The Intergenerational Effect of Education on Delinquency (with Monica Deza), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (link)
Are U.S. Cities Underpoliced?: Theory and Evidence (with Justin McCrary), The Review of Economics and Statistics (link)
Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Literature (with Justin McCrary), Journal of Economic Literature (link)
Estimating the Crime Effects of Raising the Age of Majority: Evidence from Connecticut (with Charles Loeffler), Criminology & Public Policy (link)
Testing Rational Choice Theory Using Individual-Level Panel Data (with Tom Loughran, Ray Paternoster and Theodore Wilson), Criminology (link)
Estimating the Effects of Immigration Enforcement on Local Policing and Crime: Evidence from the Secure Communities Program (with Charles Loeffler and Elina Treyger), Criminology & Public Policy (link)
What is the Contribution of Immigration to U.S. Crime Rates? Evidence from Rainfall Shocks in Mexico, The American Law & Economics Review (link)
What do Panel Studies Tell Us About a Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment? (with Steve Raphael and Amelia Haviland),
Journal of Quantitative Criminology (link)
Re-Assessing the Cost of the Death Penalty Using Quasi-Experimental Methods: Evidence from Maryland (with John Roman and Carly Knight), The American Law & Economics Review (link)
The DNA Field Experiment: A Randomized Trial of the Cost-Effectiveness of Using DNA to Solve Property Crimes (with John Roman, Shannon Reid and Carly Knight), Journal of Experimental Criminology (link)
Resting Papers
The COVID-19 Pandemic, Domestic Violence and the Riskiness of Alcohol Consumption (draft)
with Shooshan Danagoulian and Monica Deza
Book Chapters and Non-Refereed Articles
State Policies and Police Personnel Decisions (with Dylan Fitzpatrick and Jens Ludwig), Arnold Ventures Police Accountability Roundtable Discussion Paper (link)
Capital Punishment Research (with Valentine Gilbert and Lucie Parker), The Encyclopedia of Research Methods and Statistical Techniques in Criminal Justice (link)
The Effect of Parental Education on Children's Drug and Alcohol Use (with Monica Deza), American Economic Association: Papers & Proceedings (link)
Prisons and Crime Control (with Sarah Tahamont), The Oxford Handbook on Prisons and Imprisonment (link)
Economic Theory (with Sarah Tahamont), Deterrence, Choice and Crime: Contemporary Perspectives, Routledge Press
Productivity and Selection of Human Capital with Machine Learning (with Oren Danieli, Andrew Hillis, Zubin Jelveh, Jens Ludwig and Sendhil Mullainathan), American Economic Association: Papers & Proceedings (link)
The Long-Run Effect of Mexican Immigration on Crime in U.S. Cities: Evidence from Variation in Mexican Fertility Rates, American Economic Association: Papers & Proceedings (link)
The Economic Costs of Crime, The Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment, Wiley Blackwell (Wesley Jennings, editor) (link)
Work and Crime (with Steve Raphael), The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Criminal Justice, Oxford University Press (Michael Tonry, editor)
We’re Building Something Here: Reducing Gun Violence in Baltimore’s Western District (with Max Kapustin, Cristina Layana, Jeremy Biddle, Brian Wade, Ben Struhl and Anthony Braga)
Improving Police Performance: An Experimental Evaluation of the Policing Leadership Academy (with Dylan Fitzpatrick, Max Kapustin, Kailey White and Anthony Braga)
The Effects of Providing Postsecondary Educational Opportunities to Prison Inmates: Evidence from a Randomized Trial (with Jordan Hyatt and Sarah Tahamont)
Re-Visiting the Effect of Vocational Training in Prisons: A Randomized Evaluation of The Last Mile (with Anthony Braga, Ben Struhl, Sarah Tahamont, Britte van Tiem and Laura Mutis)
Working Papers
Can Gun Violence Be Deterred at Low Cost? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in New York City (draft)
- with Oludmilare Aboaba, Michael LaForest, Lucie Parker and Patrick Sharkey
- Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Policy Analysis & Management
Crime and the City: The Computational Turn in Research and Its Future
- with Gian Maria Campedelli, Zubin Jelveh, Daniel Semenza, Eric Piza, Massimiliano Luca, Adriana Albors-Zumel, Bruno Lepri and Pat Sharkey
- Revise & Re-submit, Nature
Perils and Pitfalls in the Use of Synthetic Control Methods to Study Public Safety Interventions (draft)
- with Zubin Jelveh
Substance Abuse Facilities and Local Crime
Journal Articles (Refereed)
Can Brighter Street Lighting Reduce Street Crime at Scale? Evidence from Philadelphia (with Alyssa Mendlein, Maya Moritz, Brian Wade and John MacDonald), Criminology & Public Policy (link)
Professional Motivations in the Public Sector: Evidence from Police Officers (with Felipe Goncalves), Forthcoming, American Economic Review (draft)
- Featured on Probable Causation podcast
Did Violence Against Asian-Americans Rise in 2020? Evidence from a Novel Approach to Measuring Racially-Motivated Attacks (with Alex Knorre and Britte van Tiem), Forthcoming, Justice Quarterly (draft)
Cities and Policing for Crime Prevention: Refocusing the Agenda (with Anthony Braga and John MacDonald), The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science (link)
Place-Based Approaches to Reducing Violent Crime Hot Spots: A Review of the Evidence on Public Health Approaches (with John MacDonald, David Mitre Becerril and Alex Knorre), Aggression and Violent Behavior (link)
Investments in Policing and Community Safety, Annual Review of Criminology (link)
Understanding Vaccine Hesitancy in U.S. Prisons: Perspectives from a Statewide Survey of Incarcerated People (with Emily Greberman, Erin Kerrison and Jordan Hyatt) Vaccines (link)
Does Proactive Policing Really Increase Major Crime? Accounting for an Ecological Fallacy (with David Mitre Becerril and Morgan Williams Jr.), Journal of Comments and Replications in Economics (link)
An Emerging Racial Disparity in U.S. Traffic Fatalities (with Maxim Massenkoff and Aartik Sarma), JAMA Surgery (link)
Crime and Disorder Trends Associated with the Introduction of Overdose Prevention Centers in New York City (with Brandon del Pozo and David Mitre Becerril), JAMA: Network Open (link)
- Media Coverage: New York Times, New York Daily News, Vice News, Gothamist
Comparing Risks of Firearm-Related Death and Injury Among Young Adult Males in Selected US Cities to Wartime Service in Iraq and Afghanistan (with Brandon del Pozo, Alex Knorre and Michael Mello), JAMA: Network Open (link)
- Media Coverage: The Conversation, Forbes, Yahoo News, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Times, New York Sun
The Minimum Legal Drinking Age and Crime Victimization (with Ben Hansen and Rachel Ryley), Journal of Human Resources (link)
- NBER Working paper version: link
- Media Coverage: Market Watch, The Daily Pennsylvanian
No Ground Truth? No Problem: Improving Administrative Data Linking Using Active Learning and a Little Bit of Guile (with Sarah Tahamont, Zubin Jelveh, Melissa McNeill, Shi Yan and Ben Hansen), PLos ONE (link)
Activity-Adjusted Crime Rates Show That Public Safety Worsened in 2020 (with Maxim Massenkoff), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (link)
- Media Coverage: Washington Post, Slate
Can Deterrence Persist? Long-Term Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of Street Lighting (with David Mitre Becerril, Jason Lerner and Sarah Tahamont), Criminology & Public Policy (link)
Police Force Size and Civilian Race (with Ben Hansen, Emily Weisburst and Morgan Williams Jr.), American Economic Review: Insights (link)
- NBER Working Paper version: link
- Niskanen Center commentary: link
- Media coverage: New York Times,Washington Post, Vox, Minneapolis Star Tribune, NPR Planet Money, Reason, Penn Today
Can Precision Policing Reduce Gun Violence? Evidence from "Gang Takedowns" in New York City (with Mike LaForest and Jacob Kaplan), Journal of Policy Analysis & Management (link) (pre-print)
- Featured on JPAM's Closer Look podcast
- Niskanen Center commentary: link
- Media Coverage: New York Times, Fox News
Street Light Outages, Public Safety and Crime Attraction (with Jacob Kaplan and Mike LaForest), Journal of Quantitative Criminology (link)
Reducing Crime Through Environmental Design: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of Street Lighting in New York City (with Ben Hansen, Jason Lerner and Lucie Parker), Journal of Quantitative Criminology (link)
- NBER Working paper version: link
- Media Coverage: Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Astronomy Magazine, Inside Science, The Crime Report
- Featured on Probable Causation podcast
Ambient Lighting, Use of Outdoor Spaces and Perceptions of Public Safety: Evidence from a Survey Experiment (with Jacob Kaplan), Forthcoming, Security Journal (link) (pre-print)
How Many Complaints Against Police Officers Can Be Abated By Incapacitating a Few "Bad Apples?" (with Jacob Kaplan), Forthcoming, Criminology & Public Policy (link)
- Reply essay by Michael Sierra-Arevalo and Andrew Papachristos: link
- Our (unpublished) reply to their reply: link
- Featured on NPR Future of Policing in Columbus podcast
- American Society of Criminology press release: link
- Media Coverage: FreeThink
Testing Public Policy at the Frontier: The Effect of the $15 Minimum Wage on Public Safety in Seattle (with David Mitre Becerril), Forthcoming, Criminology & Public Policy (link)
- Media Coverage: American Association for the Advancement of Science EurekAlert, NextCity
Measuring Marginal Crime Concentration: A New Solution to an Old Problem (with Jacob Kaplan and Maria Cuellar), Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency (link)
Dude, Where's My Treatment Effect? Errors in Administrative Data Linking and the Destruction of Statistical Power in Randomized Experiments (with Sarah Tahamont, Zubin Jelveh, Shi Yan and Ben Hansen), Journal of Quantitative Criminology (link)
- NBER Working Paper version, formerly titled, "Administrative Data Linking and Statistical Power Problems in Randomized Experiments": link
Immigration Enforcement, Crime and Demography: Evidence from the Arizona Legal Workers Act (with Monica Deza),
Criminology & Public Policy (link)
- Best Paper Award for Early Career Scholars, Criminology & Public Policy
- Media Coverage: OMNIA Magazine, Penn Today
More Sneezing, Less Crime? Health Shocks and the Market for Offenses (with Shooshan Danagoulian and Monica Deza),
Journal of Health Economics (link)
- Media Coverage: Chicago Policy Review, Harvard Kennedy School: Journalist's Resource
More Cops, Fewer Prisoners? (with Jacob Kaplan), Criminology & Public Policy (link)
The Intergenerational Effect of Education on Delinquency (with Monica Deza), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (link)
- Media Coverage: Black Enterprise
Are U.S. Cities Underpoliced?: Theory and Evidence (with Justin McCrary), The Review of Economics and Statistics (link)
- NBER Working Paper version, formerly entitled, "The Effect of Police on Crime: New Evidence from U.S. Cities": link
- Media Coverage: Baltimore Sun, Bloomberg, City Journal, FiveThirtyEight, Marginal Revolution, Politico, The Economist, Vox
Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Literature (with Justin McCrary), Journal of Economic Literature (link)
Estimating the Crime Effects of Raising the Age of Majority: Evidence from Connecticut (with Charles Loeffler), Criminology & Public Policy (link)
Testing Rational Choice Theory Using Individual-Level Panel Data (with Tom Loughran, Ray Paternoster and Theodore Wilson), Criminology (link)
Estimating the Effects of Immigration Enforcement on Local Policing and Crime: Evidence from the Secure Communities Program (with Charles Loeffler and Elina Treyger), Criminology & Public Policy (link)
- Media Coverage: Cato Institute
What is the Contribution of Immigration to U.S. Crime Rates? Evidence from Rainfall Shocks in Mexico, The American Law & Economics Review (link)
- Media Coverage: Cato Institute, LSE American Politics and Policy Blog, Pacific Standard
What do Panel Studies Tell Us About a Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment? (with Steve Raphael and Amelia Haviland),
Journal of Quantitative Criminology (link)
Re-Assessing the Cost of the Death Penalty Using Quasi-Experimental Methods: Evidence from Maryland (with John Roman and Carly Knight), The American Law & Economics Review (link)
The DNA Field Experiment: A Randomized Trial of the Cost-Effectiveness of Using DNA to Solve Property Crimes (with John Roman, Shannon Reid and Carly Knight), Journal of Experimental Criminology (link)
- Award for Best-Field Trial, ASC Division of Experimental Criminology
- Urban Institute's Presidential Award for Best Annual Research Publication
Resting Papers
The COVID-19 Pandemic, Domestic Violence and the Riskiness of Alcohol Consumption (draft)
with Shooshan Danagoulian and Monica Deza
- NBER Working Paper version: link
- Media Coverage: Washington Post
Book Chapters and Non-Refereed Articles
State Policies and Police Personnel Decisions (with Dylan Fitzpatrick and Jens Ludwig), Arnold Ventures Police Accountability Roundtable Discussion Paper (link)
Capital Punishment Research (with Valentine Gilbert and Lucie Parker), The Encyclopedia of Research Methods and Statistical Techniques in Criminal Justice (link)
The Effect of Parental Education on Children's Drug and Alcohol Use (with Monica Deza), American Economic Association: Papers & Proceedings (link)
Prisons and Crime Control (with Sarah Tahamont), The Oxford Handbook on Prisons and Imprisonment (link)
Economic Theory (with Sarah Tahamont), Deterrence, Choice and Crime: Contemporary Perspectives, Routledge Press
Productivity and Selection of Human Capital with Machine Learning (with Oren Danieli, Andrew Hillis, Zubin Jelveh, Jens Ludwig and Sendhil Mullainathan), American Economic Association: Papers & Proceedings (link)
The Long-Run Effect of Mexican Immigration on Crime in U.S. Cities: Evidence from Variation in Mexican Fertility Rates, American Economic Association: Papers & Proceedings (link)
The Economic Costs of Crime, The Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment, Wiley Blackwell (Wesley Jennings, editor) (link)
Work and Crime (with Steve Raphael), The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Criminal Justice, Oxford University Press (Michael Tonry, editor)
