Research

Working Papers

• "Information Frictions and Postsecondary Enrollment: Evidence from Appalachian Ohio"—under review

Abstract: This paper examines a series of high school-level interventions designed to encourage college attendance in a historically underperforming region, Appalachian Ohio. High schools received competitive grants to combat information frictions regarding postsecondary enrollment—through campus visits, college fairs, financial aid seminars, etc. I estimate the effect of competitive grants on postsecondary enrollment. Only Appalachian high schools were eligible for the program, and I exploit this policy-induced variation in treatment allocation to compare college attendance rates for high schools that received funding and similar, non-Appalachian high schools that were ineligible for the program using a difference-in-differences framework. Leveraging multiple datasets, treatment specifications, and control groups, I document two findings: i) no evidence suggests that the grants increased college enrollment overall and ii) there is no evidence that attendance patterns shifted to higher-quality institutions.

• "Public Adoptions, Personal Income, and the Federal Adoption Tax Credit: Evidence from Florida" (with Luke P. Rodgers)—revise and resubmit

Abstract: There is some agreement that a child’s outcomes improve upon adoption relative to staying in foster care homes and that policies should facilitate that transition. The federal Adoption Tax Credit (ATC) can help offset the cost of adoption, yet it is unclear whether it has a positive impact on the number of adoptions or if it merely transfers resources to households who would have adopted anyway. The ATC has primarily been a nonrefundable tax credit, but in 2010 and 2011 the full amount (over $13,000) was available as a refundable tax credit to all families regardless of their tax liability. Using county-level data from Florida, we estimate changes in the number of finalized public adoptions in months preceding the end of the refundability period. We document an average increase of 3.2 additional public adoptions (68 percent) per county immediately before the refundable period ended. While this effect is large, estimates show relative decreases in average adoptions in the first months of 2012, suggesting a retiming of adoptions rather than new adoptions. Importantly, the response appears to be concentrated in higher-income, more populated areas. Poorer, rural counties exhibit no response to the credit’s expiration.

• "Suffering in Silence: How COVID-19 School Closures Inhibit the Reporting of Child Maltreatment" (with E. Jason Baron and Ezra G. Goldstein) (SSRN)—under review

Media coverage: Chalkbeat, neaToday, CityLab, American Enterprise Institute, New York Times, Medium

Abstract: To combat the spread of COVID-19, many primary and secondary schools in the United States canceled classes and moved instruction online. This study examines an unexplored consequence of COVID-19 school closures: the broken link between child maltreatment victims and the number one source of reported maltreatment allegations—school personnel. Using current, county-level data from Florida, we estimate a counterfactual distribution of child maltreatment allegations for March and April 2020, the first two months in which Florida schools closed. While one would expect the financial, mental, and physical stress due to COVID-19 to result in additional child maltreatment cases, we find that the actual number of reported allegations was approximately 15,000 lower (27 percent) than expected for these two months. We leverage a detailed dataset of school district staffing and spending to show that the observed decline in allegations was primarily driven by school closures. Finally, we discuss policy implications of our findings and suggest a number of responses that may mitigate this hidden cost of school closures.

Works in Progress

• "The Effect of Targeted Federal Economic Spending on Crime: Evidence from the Los Angeles Promise Zone" (with Carl Kitchens)
• "The Effect of Monetary Compensation of Birth Mother Adoption Costs on the Number of Private Infant Adoptions"