Highlighted Publications




 

Mejia, Wigul, Hsieh, and Johnson (2026) examined whether the benefits of earning a college degree outweigh the costs for California students. They drew on labor market, higher education, financial aid, and student debt data from California and national sources to compare earnings, employment outcomes, college costs, and borrowing patterns across educational levels. They found that college graduates earn substantially more than non-graduates, with bachelor’s degree holders ear

Sacerdote, Staiger, and Tine (2025) examined whether test-optional college admissions policies help or harm high-achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. They analyzed admissions and enrollment data from Dartmouth College covering more than 99,000 applicants across test-required and test-optional years. Their primary question was whether withholding SAT or ACT scores affects admission outcomes. They found that high-achieving disadvantaged students often failed to

Lofstrom, Martin, and Susanto (2026) examined whether racial disparities in law enforcement stops in California narrowed between 2019 and 2023. They analyzed more than 15 million traffic and pedestrian stops reported by California’s 15 largest law enforcement agencies under the Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA). They found that overall stops declined sharply after the pandemic, remaining about one million below pre-pandemic levels by 2023. The Black-white gap in police

Leifheit et al. (2026) examined which state-level factors were associated with rising homelessness across U.S. states between 2019 and 2024. They analyzed annual state-level data on homelessness counts, rents, unemployment, eviction moratoria, emergency rental assistance, overdose deaths, immigration, and climate-related property damage. Their primary finding was that eviction moratoria and climate-related disasters were the factors most consistently associated with year-over