Working Papers
“Colonialism, Institutional Trust and Out-Group Bias: Evidence from Morocco (Job Market Paper)” [Draft]
This study shows that Morocco’s exposure to different institutional and administrative practices under French and Spanish protectorates in the early 20th century has long-run effects on out-group bias and trust in institutions. The French colonial administration pursued a discriminatory policy implemented through education and by separating legal systems between ethnicities. Using spatial regression discontinuity design, I find that people on the former French side of the border have lower trust in the president and parliament compared to those on the Spanish side where this policy was not present. They also have worse perceptions of how the government is handling economic issues. Furthermore, they show more negative attitudes toward people of other religions and ethnicities. I show that these results are not driven by wealth, education, or economic development. The findings are robust to alternative specifications, narrower bandwidths, excluding coastal observations, and shifting the border.
Work in Progress
“Teacher Wage Increase and Teacher Hiring: Evidence from a Border Discontinuity Difference-in-Differences Approach (with Wing Yin Chung)”
This paper examines the effect of Arkansas's LEARNS Act—a major education reform designed to improve teacher compensation—on district-level teacher hiring. Using administrative employment records and leveraging a border discontinuity difference-in-differences framework with neighboring Texas districts as a comparison group, we evaluate whether the policy led to measurable increases in new teacher hiring. Preliminary results indicate no statistically significant effect on new teacher hires in the first two years following the policy’s implementation. Future work will extend the analysis by (i) examining longer-term hiring effects as additional post-policy data become available, (ii) exploring heterogeneous impacts across urban, suburban, and rural districts.
“Effect of Universal Background Check Laws on Criminal Activity”
There are more than 400 million guns circulating in private ownership in United States which is one of main reasons for gun violence prevention programs and laws being an integral part of public safety. Using synthetic control method, this paper studies the effect of universal background check laws that extend the requirement for background checks to private sales on different crime outcomes. I employ both classic and bias-corrected synthetic control method, as well as synthetic control model with ”staggered” adoption that allows multiple treatment units at different time periods to study the relationship. Using FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and National Incident Based Reporting System’s crime data, I find a decrease in firearm homicides and aggravated assault, and the effect is significant. I find an increase in armed robbery rates which is also significant. Other than that, in order to look at potential mechanisms, I look at FBI data on background checks denials and observe an increase in background check application rate and no change in denial rates after laws were passed.