Zahra Siddique

Partially Identified Treatment Effects Under Imperfect Compliance: The Case of Domestic Violence

The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment (MDVE) is a randomized social experiment with imperfect compliance that has been extremely influential in how police officers respond to misdemeanor domestic violence. This article reexamines data from the MDVE, using recent literature on partial identification to find recidivism associated with a policy that arrests misdemeanor domestic violence suspects rather than not arresting them. Using partially identified bounds on the average treatment effect, I find that arresting rather than not arresting suspects can potentially reduce recidivism by more than two-and-a-half times the corresponding intent-to-treat estimate and more than two times the corresponding local average treatment effect, even when making minimal assumptions on counterfactuals.

The Economic Payoff of Name Americanization

We provide the first evidence of the magnitude and consequences of the Americanization of migrants’ names in the early twentieth century. We construct a longitudinal data set of naturalization records, tracking migrants and their naming choices over time. We consistently find that migrants who Americanized their names experienced larger occupational upgrading than those who did not. Name Americanization embodies an intention to assimilate among low-skilled migrants and reveals the existence of preferences for American names within the labor market. We conclude that the trade-off between individual identity and labor market success was present then as it is today.

Caste Based Discrimination: Evidence and Policy

Caste-based quotas in hiring have existed in the public sector in India for decades. Recently there has been debate about introducing similar quotas in private sector jobs. This paper uses an audit study to determine the extent of caste-based discrimination in the Indian private sector. On average low-caste applicants need to send 20 percent more resumes than high-caste applicants to get the same callback. Differences in callback which favor high-caste applicants are particularly large when hiring is done by male recruiters or by Hindu recruiters. This finding suggests that the differences in callback between high and low-caste applicants are not entirely due to statistical discrimination. High-caste applicants are also differentially favored by firms with a smaller scale of operations, while low-caste applicants are favored by firms with a larger scale of operations. This finding is consistent with taste-based theories of discrimination and with commitments made by large firms to hire actively from among low-caste groups.

Tax Evasion, Minimum Wage Non-Compliance and Informality

We study the impact of tax and minimum wage reforms on the incidence of informality. To gauge the incidence of informality, we use measures of the extent of tax evasion, the extent of minimum wage non-compliance, and the size of the informal workforce. Our approach allows us to examine (i) the distinction between determinants of firm-level reported wage distribution and actual wage distribution, (ii) the complementarity of tax and minimum wage enforcement, (iii) the impact that a minimum wage reform has on tax and minimum wage compliance, and (iv) the impact that a tax policy reform has on tax and minimum wage compliance. We conclude with the design of optimal minimum wage and tax policies (even in the complete absence of minimum wage enforcement). We do so based on two objectives derived from popular concerns associated with an unchecked expansion of informality: tax revenue maximization, and poverty alleviation among workers.