Research

Works in Progress

Impact of Medicaid Dental Benefits on Maternal and Child Health

with Qian X, Bruckner T, Manski R, Lipton B

Policy Implications of Hearing Aid Coverage in Medicaid Managed Care Plans

with Tonti L, Arnold M, Lipton B

Impact of paid sick leave policies on SSI/SSDI participation among children and adults with disabilities

with Qian X, Sabia J, Lipton B

Impact of Telehealth Policy Expansion on Suicide Rates and Substance Use Treatment

with Masoumirad M

Working Papers

Striking the Balance: Human Discretion and Algorithmic Insights in Parole Supervision Decision-Making
with Nicholas Powell
Updated: May 2023

In this paper, we examine the interplay between predictive algorithms and hu- man discretion in determining parole supervision levels. Adopting a method- ological approach centered on the random assignment of parole officers at spe- cific risk score thresholds—particularly at junctures where parolees transition between various supervision levels—we investigate the impact of officers’ deci- sions to deviate from algorithmic recommendations on recidivism rates. Our findings reveal that professional adjustments to higher supervision levels consis- tently lead to reduced recidivism rates, while adjustments to lower supervision levels don’t display a significant effect. This underscores the pivotal role of strategic resource allocation in parole supervision, indicating that harsh over- rides can be resource-optimal in effectively lowering recidivism. Conversely, lenient overrides maintain stable recidivism rates without necessitating inten- sified supervision. Additionally, the study contributes to the ongoing discourse on the role of human intervention in algorithmic recommendations within the criminal justice system.

Discrimination and Constraints: Evidence from The Voice
Updated: November 2022

Gender discrimination in the hiring process is one significant factor contributing to labor market disparities. However, there is little evidence on the extent to which gender bias by hiring managers is responsible for these disparities. In this paper, I exploit a unique dataset of blind auditions of The Voice television show as an experiment to identify own-gender bias in the selection process. The  first televised stage audition, in which four noteworthy recording artists are coaches, listens to the contestants “blindly” (chairs facing away from the stage) to avoid seeing the contestant. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, a coach (hiring person) is demonstrably exogenous with respect to the artist’s gender, I  find that artists are 4.5 percentage points (11 percent) more likely to be selected when they are the recipients of an opposite-gender coach. I also utilize the machine-learning approach in Athey et al. (2018) to include heterogeneity from team gender composition, order of performance, and failure rates of the coaches. The  findings of offer a new perspective to enrich past research on gender discrimination, shedding light on the instances of gender bias variation by the gender of the decision maker and team gender composition.

Pandemic Safeguards and Household Safety

with G. DeAngelo, Y.Le, S.Cunningham, and R.Thornton

A flurry of research has examined the effect of COVID-19-related policies on family violence with considerable variation in approach, often producing conflicting results. In this paper, we provide four main contributions to the existing literature. First, we utilize up-to-date estimation methods developed by Goodman-Bacon (2021) and Callaway and Sant’Anna (2020) to account for the differential timing in implementing COVID-19 policies and compare our estimates with traditional two-way fixed effects. Second, we use the most comprehensive data from the United States from 30 jurisdictions across 18 states to ensure that our conclusions are not reached due to data selection issues. Third, we evaluate three COVID policies: shelter-in-place, school closures, and daycare closures. Fourth, we use two measures of family violence: adult domestic violence and child violence. We find that school closure significantly doubled the number of child abuse calls per day from the mean. However, daycare closure significantly reduced 1.2 calls of child abuse calls per day. We detect no effect for shelter-in-place or daycare closure orders and document a reversal of our estimates’ direction when using Callaway and Sant’Anna (2020). to measure the impact of daycare closure relative to a two-way fixed effect.