Proposal Description:

The US accounts for 5% of the world population but 25% of those behind bars. This leaves many US communities—disproportionately low-income and minority– with a deficit of prime-age males. Stanford’s Professor Marcella Alsan and I ask, what is the impact (in terms of health, education and employment) of the removal of these men on the communities they leave behind? Clearly a regression of community outcome on number imprisoned would be unconvincing as the causal impact of imprisonment on the community. Our plan is to leverage a combination of state prison reforms and local-level prosecutorial leniency for identification. The role of the research assistant would be to investigate whether our proposed identification strategy is valid, using a combination of graphical and statistical analysis.

Requisite Skills and Qualifications:

The successful candidate will have strong econometrics and STATA skills, including graphing capabilities.