This paper analyses the Hydra darknet marketplace to provide a counterfactual example of what may eventuate if governments were to change their current policy and allow darknet drug marketplaces to exist without disruption. (Criminology & Public Policy, Nov 2023)

This paper empirically tests the assumption that police frisks face diminishing marginal returns. This assumption is key to economic models that test for racial discrimination in police frisks using Becker’s marginal outcome test. (AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022)

This paper tests for bias against racial minority and female attorneys by examining its impact on case outcomes. I analyze the differences across judges in the rates at which attorneys of different demographic groups secure pretrial release. I find statistically significant variation in the release rate between Black and White attorneys measured across different judges. This suggests that defense attorney race impacts judicial decisions.

This paper develops a structural model of demand for illegal drug varieties and studies how consumers substitute between different types of drugs in response to government policies. We use a unique longitudinal dataset on prices, quantities, and individual decisions that we obtained by scraping a darknet marketplace that covered the majority of the retail illegal drug trade in Russia. The estimated model is used to evaluate counterfactual drug policies. We find that the legalization of cannabis has the benefit of decreasing the use of riskier drugs while increasing cannabis use. Finally, our model helps identify the optimal drugs to target for interdiction, specifically those without close substitutes, such as Alpha-PVP.

This paper provides empirical corroboration of optimizing models of police behaviour. Examining changes in stops and frisks around the pandemic onset and the protests following the killing of George Floyd, we find that hit rates generally rose as stops and frisks fell dramatically.