Non-physician providers, like Certified Nurse Midwives (CNM) face additional licensing statutes, limiting their ability to deliver care. This project explores if expanding CNM’s scope of practice to Full Practice Authority affects maternal care access & delivery. Using Medicaid claims, this study examines changes in provider involvement and resultant maternal outcomes. 

​Saving is a widespread financial practice, yet we know little about why savings regimes differ across countries. Drawing on historical and contemporary analysis, this project shows how the expansion and regulation of saving shaped distinct forms of what Ayelet terms "financial citizenship," embedded in the development of welfare states in advanced democracies.

​This project examines how Blue Economy initiatives impact coastal communities, focusing on the displacement and marginalization of small-scale fishers. It critically analyzes development narratives like Blue Growth and marine conservation to assess their social, cultural, and livelihood implications, with a focus on justice, equity, and community agency.

​Understanding how family income impacts child well-being is essential for designing effective child-focused policy. Emily conducts an econometric analysis of how parents spent the 2021 Child Tax Credit to test theories of household decision-making. My empirics are grounded by historical and political analyses of the factors shaping US family policy. 

​Kidney transplantation is lifesaving treatment for people with kidney failure, but access is inequitable by race, gender, and their intersection. This project investigates the causal role of individual-level socioeconomic and clinical factors and US state-level policies and conditions, which will inform the development of interventions and policies to mitigate these inequities.

​This research evaluates Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPs) for individuals enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid. Using novel econometric methods (IV-DiD) and policy-driven default enrollment changes, we find defaults significantly increase D-SNP enrollment, which reduces skilled nursing facility use. These findings inform insurance design for vulnerable populations and managed care effectiveness.

​This project uses novel administrative data to examine how the 2008 foreclosure crisis affected families across generations. By analyzing tax records and quasi-experimental variation in foreclosure mitigation programs, it aims to shed light on the persistent impacts of housing displacement on the economic trajectories of parents and children.

Donghwan's research aims to comprehensively identify walkability issues in minority neighborhoods by leveraging ChatGPT’s advanced visual reasoning capabilities and Google Street View imagery. Ultimately, the study reveals specific barriers encountered in the daily lives of minorities and their spatial patterns, contributing to a deeper understanding of walkability-related inequalities.

​Inclusionary zoning ordinances require housing developers to rent a share of new units at affordable rates to low income residents. Theory predicts this constrains housing supply, making the net effect on housing affordability ambiguous. Noah empirically evaluates the effect on housing supply using a novel administrative data.

​Short-interval pregnancies have been linked to adverse mother and infant health and economic outcomes and are often unintentional. Elizabeth examines the effect of subsidized access to high quality contraceptives on childbearing, birth spacing, and infant health by exploiting state-level changes to the Medicaid payment structure using restricted Vital Statistics data.

Lillian's dissertation investigates how the role of immigrant neighborhoods in providing refuge, through lower rents and residential stability, have changed over time, especially as U.S. rental housing becomes increasingly unaffordable. In so doing, I highlight housing outcomes as understudied dimensions of immigrant integration.

​Zikai studies how place-based clean-energy incentives affect climate attitudes. Combining a natural experiment with geographically targeted surveys, he tests whether extra clean-energy funding for low-income communities shifts policy support. He will also examine how information about these provisions interacts with actual experience of clean energy expansion to shape attitudes.

​Economic stress during the transition from adolescence to adulthood has significant repercussions on wellbeing during and after this process. My dissertation examines the long-term, intergenerational effects of the Malawi Social Cash Transfer Programme on youth relationships, with the goal of preventing intimate partner violence early in life.

​Using georeferenced data on wildlife habitats and armed conflicts worldwide, Guy estimates the armed conflict externalities of international trade restrictions on wildlife products aimed at protecting biodiversity. Accounting for the spatial distribution of resources, he finds that these externalities are comparable in magnitude to those associated with well-documented conflict minerals. The paper highlights the unintended costs of environmental policies that rely on trade restrictions, particularly the disproportionate burden they place on poorer countries—where most wildlife products originate.

​This mixed-methods dissertation seeks to define and develop criteria for what constitutes meaningful access to the courts for detained individuals. Using these criteria, Christina will document how jails interpret and implement the right to meaningful access for their pre-trial populations and investigate discrepancies in court access across the United States. 

Aarushi's dissertation examines domestic violence courts’ reliance on rehabilitation despite limited evidence of reduced recidivism. Using ethnographic methods, it documents one court’s role in the social construction of intimate partner violence, risk, and accountability, and explores the unacknowledged problems subtly managed under the banner of therapeutic jurisprudence.

​This project uses an RCT to evaluate a “Learning by Teaching” intervention with over 2,500 middle & high school students. Students randomly assigned to create weekly math video explanations improved their math skills, put more effort into their homework, and were better able to generalize what they learned. 

With only 1% of Ugandans covered by health insurance, many households face catastrophic medical costs. Dorit's research uses a participatory simulation modeling approach to assess the distributional impact of a proposed national health insurance program on health and financial risk protection outcomes, informing evidence-based health policy design in Uganda.

​Does relaxing standardized testing requirements help economically disadvantaged students gain access to and succeed at university? This project studies the effects of reduced standardized testing on university enrollment and downstream labor market outcomes. Our results will speak to the consequences of standardized testing for equity and educational mismatch.

Aditya's dissertation examines the discourses, policy orientations, and practices that inform two opposite processes: the construction - in the 1950s and 60s - of Interstate 81 in Syracuse, New York, and the ongoing teardown of the same highway. In doing so, he hopes to understand how the highway came to be built, and whether there are enduring patterns and presumptions within policymaking that are evident today. Given that the teardown has been framed as a reversal of past wrongs, his research seeks to learn from the past to establish a base for more just, transformative urban policymaking.