Published Papers

• Kuziemko, I. and E. Werker. "How Much is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations," Journal of Political Economy (forthcoming)
  
  Abstract: Ten of the fifteen seats on the U.N. Security Council are held by rotating members serving two-year terms. We find that a country’s U.S. aid increases by 59 percent and its U.N. aid by 8 percent when it rotates onto the council. This effect increases during years in which key diplomatic events take place (when members’ votes should be especially valuable) and the timing of the effect closely tracks a country’s election to, and exit from, the council. Finally, the U.N. results appear to be driven by UNICEF, an organization over which the United States has historically exerted great control.

• Goldin, C., L. Katz and I. Kuziemko. “The Homecoming of American College Women: The Reversal of the College Gender Gap,” Journal of Economic Perspectives (forthcoming)
  
  Abstract: Women are currently the majority of U.S. college students and of those receiving a bachelor’s degree, but were 39 percent of undergraduates in 1960. We use three longitudinal data sets of high school graduates in 1957, 1972, and 1992 to understand the narrowing of the gender gap in college and its reversal. From 1972 to 1992 high school girls narrowed the gap with boys in math and science course taking and in achievement test scores. These variables, which we term the proximate determinants, can account for 30 to 60 percent of the relative increase in women’s college completion rate. Behind these changes were several others: the future work expectations of young women increased greatly between 1968 and 1979 and the age at first marriage for college graduate women rose by 2.5 years in the 1970s, allowing them to be more serious students. The reversal of the college gender gap, rather than just its elimination, was due in part to the persistence of behavioral and developmental differences between males and females.

• Kuziemko, I. "Does the Threat of the Death Penalty Affect Plea-Bargaining in Murder Cases? Evidence from New York's 1995 Reinstatement of Capital Punishment," American Law and Economic Review, Spring 2006
  
  Abstract: This paper investigates whether the threat of execution encourages murder defendants to plead guilty in exchange for lesser sentences. The 1995 reinstatement of capital punishment in New York—coupled with the refusal of district attorneys in some counties to pursue death sentences—provides a natural experiment to determine the effect of capital punishment on plea-bargaining. Using individual-level data on all felony arrests in the state of New York between 1985 and 1998 in a differences-in-differences-in-differences analysis, I find that the death penalty leads defendants to accept plea bargains with harsher terms, but does not increase defendants’ propensity to plead guilty in general. A differences-in-differences analysis of a national cross-section of homicide defendants confirms these results.

• Kuziemko, I. "Using Shocks to School Enrollment to Estimate the Effect of School Size on Student Achievement," Economics of Education Review, February 2006
  
  Abstract: Previous studies of the connection between school enrollment size and student achievement use crosssectional econometric models and thus do not account for unobserved heterogeneity across schools. To address this concern, I utilize school-level panel data, and generate first-differences estimates of the effect of school size on achievement. Moreover, to account for the possibility that trends in both achievement and enrollment size are jointly determined, I exploit shocks to enrollment provided by school openings, closings, and mergers in a two stage- least-squares estimation. The results suggest that smaller schools increase both math scores and attendance rates and that the benefit of smaller schools outweigh the cost.

• Kuziemko, I. and S. Levitt. “An Empirical Analysis of Imprisoning Drug Offenders,” Journal of Public Economics, August 2004
  
  Abstract: The number of prisoners incarcerated on drug-related offenses rose 15-fold between 1980 and 2000. This paper provides the first systematic empirical analysis of the implications of that dramatic shift in public policy. We estimate that cocaine prices are 5–15% higher today as a consequence of increases in drug punishment since 1985, presumably leading to reduced drug consumption. Incarcerating drug offenders is found to be almost as effective in reducing violent and property crime as locking up other types of offenders. Thus, although we demonstrate that the increase in drug prisoners led to reductions in expected time served for other crimes (especially for less serious offenses), the overall impact of increased drug incarceration has likely been a small (1–3%) reduction in violent and property crime. Back-of-the envelope estimates suggest that it is unlikely that the dramatic increase in drug imprisonment was cost-effective.
  

Works in Progress

• Kuziemko, I. “Going off Parole: How the Elimination of Discretionary Prison Release Affects the Social Cost of Crime”, NBER Working Paper 13380
  
  Abstract: During the past 30 years, most U.S. states have replaced the traditional authority of parole boards to grant inmates early release with a fixed-sentences regime in which judges’ sentences are binding. These reforms aim to increase the incapacitation of current offenders and to deter future ones by increasing time served. But they may also have important costs. I develop a framework that demonstrates that the difference in the social cost of crime under a parole system and a fixed-sentences regime depends on: (1) the effect of time served on future recidivism, (2) the accuracy of the parole board in conditioning release dates on recidivism risk, and (3) the extent to which parole encourages inmates to invest in rehabilitation. Using micro-data from Georgia, I estimate each of these relationships by exploiting quasi-experimental variation arising from policy shocks and institutional features of the state’s criminal justice system. The results suggest that each additional month in prison lowers the three-year recidivism rate by approximately 1.5 percentage points, parole boards assign longer terms to those with higher ex-ante recidivism risk, and inmates invest more in their own rehabilitation while they are in prison— and recidivate at lower rates once they are released— under parole than under a fixed-sentences regime. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that per-prisoner costs associated with imprisonment and recidivism rise by more than ten percent when a state abolishes parole.
  
• Kuziemko, I. “Human Capital Spillover in Families: Do Immigrant Parents Learn from or Lean on their English Speaking Children?” March 2006
  
  Abstract: This paper examines how children’s English skills affect their immigrant parents’ incentives to learn English themselves. On the one hand, parents may choose to learn from their English-proficient children, as having a resident English tutor should lower the cost of mastering the language. On the other hand, parents may choose to lean on their English-speaking children if children’s English skills can substitute for those of their parents in the household production function. I formalize this problem in a simple time-allocation model that yields ambiguous predictions of the sign of the effect of children’s language skills on those of their parents. I then exploit a 1998 policy change in California—a switch from bilingual education to English immersion in public schools—that led to a significant increase in English proficiency among immigrant children. Using variation between California and control states as well as within-state variation due to differences in compliance among California MSAs, I find that parents are less likely to learn English when their children’s English skills improve.

• Kuziemko, I. “Is Having Babies Contagious? Fertility Peer Effects Between Adult Siblings,” June 2006
  
  Abstract: Models of fertility have long relied on peer effects to explain the large variance in birth rates across time and place within the developed world. However, little has been done using micro-level data to establish that fertility peer effects actually exist. I find that the probability of having a child rises substantially in the two years after one’s sibling has a child. This contagion effect is strongest when substantial cost savings from coordination appear most likely and when the individual herself has little child-care experience and would thus rely heavily on siblings for information—further evidence consistent with peer effects.

• Hoxby, C., and I. Kuziemko, "Robin Hood and His Not So Merry Plan," NBER Working Paper 10722, September 2004
  
  Abstract: School finance schemes control the allocation of $370 billion a year in the United States, but their economics are poorly understood. We examine an illuminating example: Texas' “Robin Hood” scheme, which was enacted in 1994, allocates about $30 billion a year, and is currently collapsing and likely to be abandoned. Robin Hood's design causes substantial negative capitalization, shrinking its own tax base. It relies only slightly on relatively efficient (pseudo lump sum) redistibution and heavily on high marginal tax rates. Although Robin Hood reduced the spending gap between Texas' property-poor and property-rich districts by $500 per pupil, it destroyed about $27,000 per pupil in property wealth. The magnitude of this loss is important: if the state had efficiently confiscated the same wealth and invested it, it would generate sufficient annual income to make all Texas schools spend at a high level. We provide estimates of the effects of school finance system parameters, which policy makers could use to design systems that are more efficient and stable.