Expectations about job finding tend to be biased as job seekers over or underestimate their labor market prospects. Overconfident individuals may forgo realistic opportunities to apply for jobs beyond their reach, extending their job search while underconfident individuals may only search and apply for jobs that have lower wages, missing out on better opportunities. Economists Philip Kircher and Michele Belot will evaluate an intervention that aims to help job seekers better identify well-fitting job opportunities. They will conduct a randomized control trial for their study.

In 2015, with the encouragement of then-trustee Richard Thaler, five RSF behavioral economics summer institute alumni organized the first Early Career Behavioral Economics (ECBE) Conference at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. Following the success of this conference, these same scholars have organized annual conferences that alternate between the U.S. and Europe, with RSF sponsoring the four U.S. conferences.

Randomized control trials have tested how interventions such as deterrence, punishment, and employment affect violence and other criminal behavior, but they have not considered how these interventions may impact the participants’ social networks. As most offenders report offending with others, changing one person’s criminal behavior could plausibly change that of others. Economists Sara Heller and Ashley Craig will examine whether violence-reduction interventions change criminal behavior of others in participants’ social networks.

On any given day, over 48,000 youth are confined in facilities away from home due to juvenile justice or criminal justice involvement and even a short time in detention can influence a child’s well-being. Recent work has found that diversion programs can reduce recidivism, but few studies have focused on justice system-involved youth. Economist Alberto Ortega will examine the effect of the Anne Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative on arrests and disciplinary outcomes.

In 2019, there were over 37 million housing-cost-burdened households in the United States, and the national discussion about the difficulty of finding affordable housing hinges, in part, on the idea that stable housing may be a prerequisite to stability and success in other domains in life. Economists Emily Leslie and Brittany Street will investigate the impact of access to public housing assistance on labor market and criminal justice outcomes as well as how these outcomes vary by racial group.