Research

Working papers

2026, “Non-Random Assignment of Individual Identifiers and Selection into Linked Data: Implications for Research,” Center for Economic Studies Working Paper No. 26-06 (with Nicole Perales and Christin Landivar).

The U.S. Census Bureau’s Person Identification Validation System facilitates anonymous linkages between survey and administrative records by assigning Protected Identification Keys (PIKs) to person records. While PIK assignment is generally accurate, some person records are not successfully assigned a PIK, which can lead to sample selection bias in analyses of linked data. Using the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) between 2005 and 2022, we corroborate and extend existing findings on the drivers of PIK assignment, showing that the rate of PIK assignment varies widely across socio-demographic subgroups. Using earnings as a test case, we then show that limiting a survey sample of wage earners to person records with PIKs or successful linkages to W-2 wage records tends to overestimate self-reported wage earnings, on average, indicative of linkage-induced selection bias. In a validation exercise, we demonstrate that reweighting methods, such as inverse probability weighting or entropy balancing, can mitigate this bias.

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Publications

2024, “Does the Salience of Race Mitigate Gaps in Disciplinary Outcomes? Evidence from School Fights,” Economics of Education Review (with Glen Waddell).

Racial gaps in the adjudication of student misconduct are well documented—relative to white students engaged in similar behaviors, students of color are more likely to be disciplined and the discipline they receive tends to be harsher. We show that racial disparities in the adjudication of fighting infractions depend on the racial composition of incidents. While significant disparities exist within schools, we find little if any within-incident disparities. Examining disparities across fights, we show that students of color are punished more severely, on average, as fights involving only students of color are punished more severely than fights involving only white students. Moreover, students of color in multi-race fights receive punishments that are statistically indistinguishable from those assigned to white students in fights involving only white students, suggesting that disparities arise from the differential adjudication of incidents by their racial composition rather than from the differential adjudication of students within the same incident.

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2022, “Voting Rights and the Resilience of Black Turnout,” Economic Inquiry.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 increased turnout among Black voters, which then generated economic benefits for Black communities. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court invalidated the enforcement mechanism responsible for these improvements, prompting concerns that states with histories of discriminatory election practices would respond by suppressing Black turnout. I estimate the effect of the Shelby decision on the racial composition of the electorate using triple-difference comparisons of validated turnout data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. The data suggest that the Shelby decision did not widen the Black-white turnout gap in states subject to the ruling.

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