This paper examines the impact of Bihar’s 2016 alcohol prohibition on physical intimate partner violence (IPV) against women. Exploiting variation in pre-prohibition alcohol exposure across villages and census wards, I employ a difference-in-differences design with continuous treatment intensity using the UDAYA dataset. I find that the prohibition significantly reduced physical IPV, with a 10 percentage point higher pre-prohibition alcohol exposure being associated with a 2.33 percentage point dampening of the post-prohibition rise in physical abuse, on average. The protective effect is strongest among the poorest households, those with less-educated husbands, and women who are equally or more educated than their spouses, consistent with resource theory and male-backlash theory. The effect is further concentrated among mothers and women who witnessed parental violence, suggesting that the prohibition’s benefits accrue disproportionately to women with constrained outside options. An enforcement proxy based on urban, non-affluent households reveals amplified effects across all outcomes, and placebo tests using Uttar Pradesh yield null results, supporting the causal interpretation.
I examine the non-medical impacts of Vancouver Downtown Eastside Overdose Prevention Sites on nearby (less than 175 metres away) property values, littered needle rates, and crime rates. I examine sites that opened in 2016 and 2017 during the British Columbia overdose crisis, with my study period spanning 2013-2021. Using a novel application of Callaway-Sant’Anna spatial difference-in-differences in drug policy research, I find a 2-4.3% increase in property value that is plausibly linked to a 1.4-3.7% decrease in littered needles. I find no impact on crime. The examined sites led to a 6.7 million-21.2 million CAD neighbourhood wealth gain as measured by property value. This analysis diverges from much literature that finds a decrease in property value in other cities, which I theorize is due to the Downtown Eastside having relatively much higher concentrations of drug use. Because of the higher use concentration in the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver Overdose Prevention Sites may decrease visible signs of drug use. This research addresses community concerns that Vancouver Overdose Prevention Sites have negative non-medical externalities despite their documented health benefits.
Abstract: This paper examines whether local exposure to Brazil’s 2014–2016 recession affected incumbent
mayors’ electoral outcomes in the 2016 municipal elections. The recession was driven by the end of the commodities
boom and Lava Jato, Brazil’s landmark anti-corruption investigation. Using shift-share measures
of local exposure to the Lava Jato-driven recession and China trade shocks, I find that national economic
shocks did not significantly affect incumbent mayors’ vote shares, but did influence the 2018 presidential
election. These results are consistent with voters exercising sophistication in attributing responsibility across
levels of government. Furthermore, political information amplified economic voting. Mayors from parties
with no Lava Jato defendants received an electoral premium, and there is suggestive evidence that left-wing
Lava Jato parties faced greater punishment than their center or right-wing counterparts. In municipalities
where mass protests against corruption were more widespread, voters in more recession-exposed areas punished
incumbents significantly more than those in less exposed ones.
Frontier Airlines entered nearly 500 new routes after transitioning to the ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC) model in 2014. This paper examines the effects of these route entries on incumbent fares and service quality. To account for variation in entry timing, I apply a staggered difference-indifferences (DiD) design to a carrier-route level panel with data on fares, on-time performance, and carrier operations from the U.S. Department of Transportation. I also condition on pre-entry route characteristics to account for route selection.
I find Frontier’s entry reduces incumbent average fares by 7.2%, equivalent to $14.3 per ticket. Fare reductions are larger at the lower end of the distribution but present throughout. Flight reliability remains largely unchanged, while incumbents increase flight frequency by 10.1%. Incumbent passenger volume also increases by 13.1%, suggesting incumbents add flights to accommodate additional demand. Total route-level traffic also rises, with approximately two-thirds of the increase reflecting Frontier’s own ridership. The joint fare and passenger response implies elastic incumbent demand and approximately $134.3 million in monthly consumer-surplus increases, under a simple linear-demand approximation. Additional results suggest incumbent responses vary across carrier types and are larger on routes where Frontier provides frequent service after entry. Taken together, Frontier’s entry benefits consumers with fare cuts and market expansion without a substantial decline in service quality.
Do internal trade agreements meaningfully integrate labour markets? I provide evidence that effectively removing regulatory barriers in labour markets produces measurable reallocation, with effects concentrated in specialties where credentialing friction was highest. I use Saskatchewan’s 2010 accession to the New West Partnership Trade Agreement (NWPTA) as a natural experiment, and estimate a gravity-based difference-in-differences model on a bilateral physician stock panel covering all Canadian provinces and 29 medical specialties from 2000 to 2020. I find that following Saskatchewan’s accession to the NWPTA, bilateral physician stocks along treated corridors were 7.7% above their pre-treatment trajectory, while domestic retention was 9.1% below its pre-treatment trajectory, with no statistically significant wage response. The absence of a statistically significant wage response is consistent with regulatory barriers, rather than price signals, having been the binding constraint on physician mobility. The effects are concentrated in specialties with high pre-existing credentialing frictions and absent where credentials were already portable, providing a within-sample placebo. The implied wage-equivalent cost of regulatory barriers is $13,573 per physician per year. My findings are consistent with the hypothesis that internal trade agreements integrate labour markets only when their design meaningfully and effectively removes regulatory barriers.
Abstract: This paper examines the effect of electricity prices on residential solar photovoltaic installations. I use the UK energy crisis, which began in August 2021, as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of short-run electricity price fluctuations on residential solar PV adoption, exploiting the exogenous variation in electricity prices driven by global natural gas price shocks. Using a monthly-frequency panel dataset at the parliamentary constituency level, obtained via an Environmental Information Regulations request to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (EIR2025/18097), this paper estimates a dynamic distributed lag model with constituency and year fixed effects. The preferred specification, a Pseudo-Poisson Maximum Likelihood model, estimates a cumulative elasticity of 0.541, significant at the 1% level, indicating households respond inelastically to short-run electricity price shocks. This represents a substantial decline in elasticity relative to that observed in the early 2010s, when solar cell prices were substantially higher. Heterogeneity analysis finds that elasticity decreases monotonically with rurality once level effects are accounted for, while finding a threshold effect in elasticities with insolation.
This paper estimates the causal effects of state-level Pay Transparency Acts (PTAs) on wage levels and within-occupation wage dispersion in the United States using Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data (2015–2024). Leveraging staggered policy adoption across six states, I distinguish between two regimes: mandatory disclosure (salary ranges posted; Colorado, California, Washington) and upon-request disclosure (information provided only when solicited; Connecticut, Nevada, Rhode Island). I develop a Nash bargaining model with occupation-specific observability, informed by the Autor–Levy–Murnane framework, predicting that mandatory disclosure raises wages—especially in non-routine cognitive occupations—while upon-request policies may yield null or negative effects due to costly worker self-selection. Empirical results partially support these predictions: Mandatory PTAs increase wages by 1.5–2.6% at the 75th and 90th percentiles, with strongest effects in nonroutine cognitive fields (e.g., computer science, engineering). In contrast, upon-request PTAs reduce median wages by 2–5% in occupations such as sales, community services, and transportation, and substantially widen dispersion. The central conclusion is that compliance design is the primary determinant of policy impact; upon-request regimes may exacerbate inequality by shifting information costs onto less-advantaged workers.
In response to growing concerns over housing affordability and the rise of vacant investment properties, cities like Oakland, California have adopted Vacant Property Taxes (VPTs) to discourage property speculation and increase housing availability. By incentivizing occupancy and reducing artificial scarcity, these policies aim to increase supply and, in turn, put downward pressure on home prices. To evaluate this hypothesized relationship, I use a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach to study the effects of Oakland’s Measure W on residential property prices, comparing changes in Oakland to those in nearby cities where a similar tax has not been implemented. Contrary to expectations, I find a statistically significant 7.66 percentage point increase in property prices—approximately $97,205 relative to the pre-policy average—following the tax’s implementation. This result, however, is sensitive to model specification. No
evidence suggests a short-term decrease in prices, and effects are more pronounced among lower-value properties. These results challenge prevailing assumptions about VPTs as a straightforward affordability tool. Rather than lowering prices, the policy may have contributed to increased housing prices, highlighting the potential for unintended consequences depending on tax design and market dynamics.
To better understand the impacts of market concentration and reduced competition on consumers in the airline industry, this paper investigates the effects of Alaska Airlines’ 2016 merger with Virgin America on airfares and quantities of passengers. I use highly disaggregated route- and firm-level data to conduct an event study and a difference-in-differences analysis with two-way fixed effects. The identification strategy compares routes where Alaska and Virgin had both competed prior to the merger (overlapping routes) to routes where only one had operated in order
to estimate the effects of reduced competition. I find that prices did not change significantly after the merger but increased sharply by an estimated $40.96 after Alaska eliminated Virgin from the market in 2018. I attribute this result to reduced competition, because load factor, a proxy for efficiency, does not vary systematically between overlapping and non-overlapping routes after the merger.
How effective are paternity leave policies in improving new mothers’ labour market outcomes and promoting gender equality? The persistent gender earnings gap largely arises from women’s prolonged career interruptions due to disproportionate childcare responsibilities. Paternity leave policies are designed to mitigate these interruptions by encouraging a more equal share of childcare duties within a household. Existing research primarily examines restrictive, quota-based paternity leave policies, finding increased paternal leave uptake but mixed long-term effects on mothers’ labour market outcomes and household division of labour.
This study analyzes the effect of the UK’s Shared Parental Leave Regulations (SPL), which allows parents to flexibly share leave and pay. Despite having little influence on paternity leave uptake rate and duration, the reform results in a significant positive effect on women’s labour income in the childbirth year. However, this positive effect reverses in subsequent years, leading to negative impacts on mothers’ earnings. Further analysis indicates that SPL may result in a short-term reduction in fathers’ labour supply, possibly reflecting some increased childcare involvement that initially supports mothers’ earnings. Yet, this shift is accompanied by a decline in fathers’ life satisfaction and followed by a reduction in mothers’ labour supply. These patterns are consistent with research suggesting that short-term deviations from traditional gender norms may backfire on progresses in gender equality.
Abstract: This paper examines the effect of electricity prices on residential solar photovoltaic installations. I use the UK energy crisis, which began in August 2021, as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of short-run electricity price fluctuations on residential solar PV adoption, exploiting the exogenous variation in electricity prices driven by global natural gas price shocks. Using a monthly-frequency panel dataset at the parliamentary constituency level, obtained via an Environmental Information Regulations request to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (EIR2025/18097), this paper estimates a dynamic distributed lag model with constituency and year fixed effects. The preferred specification, a Pseudo-Poisson Maximum Likelihood model, estimates a cumulative elasticity of 0.541, significant at the 1% level, indicating households respond inelastically to short-run electricity price shocks. This represents a substantial decline in elasticity relative to that observed in the early 2010s, when solar cell prices were substantially higher. Heterogeneity analysis finds that elasticity decreases monotonically with rurality once level effects are accounted for, while finding a threshold effect in elasticities with insolation.
response to growing concerns over housing affordability and the rise of vacant investment properties, cities like Oakland, California have adopted Vacant Property Taxes (VPTs) to discourage property speculation and increase housing availability. By incentivizing occupancy and reducing artificial scarcity, these policies aim to increase supply and, in turn, put downward pressure on home prices. To evaluate this hypothesized relationship, I use a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach to study the effects of Oakland’s Measure W on residential property prices, comparing changes in Oakland to those in nearby cities where a similar tax has not been implemented. Contrary to expectations, I find a statistically significant 7.66 percentage point increase in property prices—approximately $97,205 relative to the pre-policy average—following the tax’s implementation. This result, however, is sensitive to model specification. No
To better understand the impacts of market concentration and reduced competition on consumers in the airline industry, this paper investigates the effects of Alaska Airlines’ 2016 merger with Virgin America on airfares and quantities of passengers. I use highly disaggregated route- and firm-level data to conduct an event study and a difference-in-differences analysis with two-way fixed effects. The identification strategy compares routes where Alaska and Virgin had both competed prior to the merger (overlapping routes) to routes where only one had operated in order
