Working Papers
Beyond the Flypaper Effect: Crowding-In from Federal Investment in Public Transit
Job Market Paper
Draft coming soon!
Abstract
I study how targeted federal grants affect state and local transit spending. My analysis uses comprehensive U.S. expenditure data from 2000–2019 and a plausibly exogenous shock from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). ARRA funds were apportioned to Urbanized Areas using pre-existing formula programs, with amounts independent of potential changes in transit investment. Using ARRA apportionments as an instrument, I find that each additional $1 of federal grants generates a $0.21 annual increase in capital transit spending from all sources. This average reflects two distinct phases of the dynamics between 2009 and 2019: an initial rise in federally funded expenditures with no displacement of state or local spending (the flypaper effect), followed by substantial crowding-in of state investments. I find that the additional funds were directed mainly toward upgrading existing buses rather than expanding systems. Consistent with this pattern, Urbanized Areas receiving more federal grants did not experience an increase in transit provision, while ridership rose only marginally. I propose a novel mechanism for the crowding-in of state investment: federal grants empowered local transit agencies, strengthening their ability to negotiate additional state funding. This interpretation is consistent with the crowding-in being confined to state sources and present in spending without economies of scale. Variation in crowding-in strength across states with different institutional characteristics provides further support for this mechanism.In the Weeds of Traffic Fatalities: Revisiting the Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws
Reject and Resubmit at the Journal of Law and Economics
Draft
Abstract
This study re-examines the finding by Anderson, Hansen, and Rees (2013) that medical marijuana laws decrease traffic fatality rates by 10.4%. I demonstrate that legalizing states were already experiencing declining fatalities prior to legalization, even after controlling for state-specific linear trends in a Two-Way Fixed Effects model. To address these pre-trends, I apply the Imputation Procedure (IP) by Borusyak, Jaravel, and Spiess (2024), which estimates state-specific trends using only not-yet-treated observations. Depending on the inclusion of potentially confounding covariates, my IP estimates suggest either a 12% increase or a zero effect on fatalities. I also show that the average state effect differs substantially from the average individual effect, indicating large heterogeneity across states. Much of the original negative result is driven by California, which accounts for over half of the population-weighted estimate. This state consistently exhibits one of the largest estimated negative effects and one of the steepest negative pre-trends.Work in Progress
Where the Road Leads: Can Infrastructure Investment Drive Technology Adoption?
Feudalism and Democracy: Evidence from Weimar Germany
With Kartikeya Batra, Ethan Kaplan & Weizheng Lai