WORK IN PROGRESS

Growing up inside the invisible frontier: the effect of gang’s territorial control on youth’s human capital accumulation (JMP).

How does the enforcement of gang’s territorial borders affects children’s and youth’s human capital accumulation? I explore this question in Medellín, Colombia. To be able to observe binding gang borders, I focus on a city-wide gang turf that happened during 2009-2012. I map the borders of one of the competing factions and perform a spatial regression discontinuity using geo-located individual level data on educational enrollment. I find that the probability of dropping out of high school is 7 p.p higher for teenage male students living inside the gang border than for students living only 150m outside of it. This discontinuity did not exist before the gang border become binding for non-gang members.

Exposure to homicidal violence during childhood: effects on schooling outcomes.

Choosing to stay in the gang: the role of endogenously formed expectations.

Understanding gang recruitment: evidence from Medellín, Colombia. With Christopher Blattman and Santiago Tobón.

Reforming police misconduct investigations. With Bocar Ba, Dean Knox, Rachel Mariman, and Jonathan Mummolo.

Using unique access to an archive of administrative records on civilian complaints against police, this multi-wave experimental study seeks to assess how Philadelphia residents understand and perceive the current civilian complaint process, and systematically evaluate the impact of transparency initiatives on civic engagement and public trust in police.