Despite years of policy and revised corporate practice intended to correct inequality in the hiring process, application gaps persist for women and individuals from underrepresented racial minority groups. Economist Tanner Eastmond and colleagues will examine whether adjusting the language about qualifications in job listings can change job seekers’ views about the company and the hiring process and help increase the number of highly qualified individuals who apply, especially from underrepresented groups.

Weiwu will examine how the construction of the Interstate Highway System reshaped the geography of economic opportunity in the United States. By constructing new linkages in historical administrative tax records that span the near universe of children born between 1964 and 1979, the study measures how large-scale infrastructure investments influenced intergenerational income mobility across neighborhoods. Preliminary analysis shows that highway development increased job connectivity and raised average incomes in suburban areas that gained access to downtown employment centers.

Do large landlords in affordable housing markets degrade the quality of their buildings? This project will explore the dynamics of unsafe and deteriorating living conditions for low-income renters in North America.

This project investigates whether prosecutorial declination policies—formal decisions not to prosecute specific low-level offenses—improve employment outcomes for individuals diverted from the criminal justice system. Despite evidence that criminal records devastate employment prospects, particularly for Black Americans who face disproportionate arrest rates, no causal evidence exists on whether prosecutorial reforms that prevent criminal record creation enhance economic mobility.

This project investigates how retirement and fertility decisions are interconnected across generations in the United States, focusing on grandparents' role as informal childcare providers. Calvo and Hong will use unique restricted-use tax records data from the U.S. spanning almost 30 years combined with rich survey data. Through an event study design, they will analyze how grandparental retirement affects adult children's fertility and labor market outcomes, and conversely, how grandchildren's arrivals influence grandparents' retirement decisions.

Since 1994, RSF has sponsored the highly successful biennial behavioral economics summer institute. Remarkably, most leaders in the field of behavioral economics have been students at one of the past RSF Summer Institutes in Behavioral Economics. Designed for about 30 advanced graduate students with an interest in developing an academic research career in behavioral economics, the institute has been led by trustee David Laibson and Matthew Rabin since 2004. The curriculum includes lectures and seminars and individual mentoring sessions.

In 2010, South Carolina passed prison reform that limited incarceration and reduced sentences for low-level offenders. Economist Analisa Packham will investigate the reform’s impact on crime and outcomes for the formerly incarcerated, including as sentence length, recidivism rates, health, and wage outcomes. She will analyze data from the South Carolina Department of Corrections, the Department of Revenue, and the National Incident-Based Reporting System for her study.