Disparities by race, gender, and other protected characteristics have been widely
documented in many important settings—such as employment, housing, criminal justice …

Child welfare and child protection systems are entrenched institutionally and their value
stances on working with marginalized groups are, at times, antithetical to the value …

We propose using penalized withdrawals from retirement savings accounts, identified from
US tax records, as a revealed-preference tool to characterize households' valuation of …

Minority renters are 42% more likely to face an eviction case than white renters. I develop
and apply a simple framework to test whether this reflects discrimination by landlords …

We evaluate the statistical and conceptual foundations of empirical tests for disparate
impact. We begin by considering a recent, popular proposal in the economics literature that …

We provide the first evidence of the impact of 9/11 on outcomes for Muslims in the US
criminal justice system. We focus on parole outcomes of Muslim men in the state of Georgia …

Traditionally, all child protection services (CPS) reports are investigated to formally
determine whether the alleged child maltreatment is confirmed. This conventional …

This dissertation focuses on one of the most vulnerable groups in society: children and
youths who interact with the child protection system. In the first chapter, I study the effects of …

Governments often change policy or practice following a tragedy. In theory, governments
should use information from tragedies to optimally update. In practice, their reactions may …