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A criminal record can severely damage labor market prospects. While public and private organizations have developed a host of policies to encourage employers to hire people with a record, research suggests some of the policies may have negative unintended consequences. To explore ways to mitigate these consequences, we conducted a discrete-choice experiment in the summer of 2017 with a nationally representative sample of employers. Employers indicated their preferences for incentives offered by staffing agencies to hire individuals with one non-violent felony conviction. These incentives include: a replacement guarantee, more detailed work history, provision of transportation to/from job site, and a fee discount. The baseline incentive involved a staffing agency verifying that the ex-offender did not have safety or rule violations in previous companies and a fee discount worth the same amount as the federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit for ex-felons (WOTC). At baseline, less than half (43%) of employers would consider hiring an individual with this incentive. The likelihood of hiring an individual with a record increased from the baseline by 69 percent if a staffing agency also provided a guarantee of a replacement worker in the event the individual was deemed unsuitable. Employers were 53 percent more likely to hire an individual providing a certificate of validated positive previous work performance history. Having consistent transportation increased the probability of being considered for hire by 33 percent, and doubling the fee discount increased the baseline probability by 42 percent.

Supplemental material, 20191118_MDMPP_Malaria_Tech_APPENDIX_FINAL.rjf_online_supp for Exploring the Use of a General Equilibrium Method to Assess the Value of a Malaria Vaccine: An Application to Ghana by Erez Yerushalmi, Priscillia Hunt, Stijn Hoorens, Christophe Sauboin and Richard Smith in MDM Policy & Practice

Regulated marijuana markets are more common today than outright prohibitions across the U.S. states. Advocates for policies that would legalize marijuana recreational markets frequently argue that such laws will eliminate crime associated with the black markets, which many argue is the only link between marijuana use and crime. Law enforcement, however, has consistently argued that marijuana medical dispensaries (regulated retail sale and a common method of medical marijuana distribution), create crime in neighborhoods with these store-fronts. This study offers new insight into the question by exploiting newly collected longitudinal data on local marijuana ordinances within California and thoroughly examining the extent to which counties that permit dispensaries experience changes in violent, property and marijuana use crimes using difference-in-difference methods. The results suggest no relationship between county laws that legally permit dispensaries and reported violent crime. We find a negative and significant relationship between dispensary allowances and property crime rates, although event studies indicate these effects may be a result of pre-existing trends. These results are consistent with some recent studies suggesting that dispensaries help reduce crime by reducing vacant buildings and putting more security in these areas. We also find a positive association between dispensary allowances and DUI arrests, suggesting marijuana use increases in conjunction with impaired driving in counties that adopt these ordinances, but these results are also not corroborated by an event study analysis.

Over a million people in the United States are employed in private security and law enforcement, yet very little is known about the effects of private police on crime. The current study examines the relationship between a privately-funded university police force and crime in a large U.S. city. Following an expansion of the jurisdictional boundary of the private police force, we see no short-term change in crime. However, using a geographic regression discontinuity approach, we find large impacts of private police on public safety, with violent crime in particular decreasing. These contradictory results appear to be a consequence of delayed effect of private police on crime.

In this paper, the immigrant-native wage differential is explained through quantile regression estimations. Using repeated cross-sections of the British Labour Force Survey from 1993-2005, we analyse the returns to covariates across the conditional earnings distribution. We estimate a pooled model with an immigrant dummy and separate models for immigrants and natives of the UK. Our results show that the positive wage gap in favour of immigrants is attributed to those at higher quantiles. Returns to education and experience vary wider for natives than for immigrants. We decompose the wage gap in the Blinder-Oaxaca framework and apply quantile regression techniques to see if immigrants simply have more viable labour market characteristics than natives or if there is a preference for immigrant workers (reverse discrimination). Our findings suggest immigrants should actually be earning more and there is sufficient evidence of discrimination. This finding is, however, not symmetric across the conditional wage distribution and immigrants atthe bottom face more discrimination than those at the top.

This paper analyses impacts of immigration on individual wages. The empirical analysis is based on the British Labour Force Survey from 1993 to 2005. In addition to mean regression methods, this paper applies a semi-parametric procedure to measure covariates at quantiles of the wage distribution. Results indicate the substitutability of immigrant workers depends on the combination of education and experience attained. Our main finding is university educated immigrants with the least experience expand wages of all UK-born workers. We also find positive wage impacts between workers with the same skill sets and these effects are stronger for immigrants than natives.