Three Essays in Applied Microeconomics

The first essay looks at police use of non-lethal weapons and how they may affect police officer safety. Using longitudinal data on several hundred U.S. police agencies, I find that the adoption of non-lethal chemical weapons had a large and significant effect on the reductions of both attacks on police officers and injuries suffered by police officers. I also illustrate how approaches which do not take advantage of longitudinal data may incorrectly estimate the effect of non-lethal weapons.

In the second essay, I (with Laura Schechter) look at different types of relationships within social networks. Some sharing relationships in social networks are reciprocated, while others are unreciprocated. We find that differing households are only more likely to be linked in unreciprocated relationships. Reciprocated risk-sharing relationships depend more on total wealth and education levels. The data suggests that both reciprocated and unreciprocated sharing are motivated by risk sharing and confirms predictions of models that differing levels of inequality lead to differing forms of risk-sharing. The results do not change when extending the analysis to indirect relationships.

In the third essay I look at how asset forfeiture law may affect the types of drug-related arrests made by police officers. These laws allow police agencies to keep some portion of assets seized from drug-related arrests. However, this has the potential to shift police agency incentives to focus on asset collection. Using a sample of several thousand police agencies over five years, I find that agencies which are allowed to retain assets make marijuana busts about half the size of agencies which are not allowed. However, there is no evidence that agencies change the number of overall drug crime arrests or arrests for more serious crimes.