UC San Diego

This dissertation is comprised of three papers using empirical methods to study issues in public and social economics. My first paper, co-authored with Julian Betts, analyzes the performance of San Diego's charter schools using fixed-effect methods on panel student data. We find that charter school performance in San Diego varies by subject matter, grades served, school type and years of operation. In many cases, we find that charter school performance is indistinguishable from that of traditional public schools. Startup elementary charter schools perform poorly in math in early years, but catch up after year three, while conversion charter schools persistently underperform in both elementary math and reading, as well as in middle school reading. Checks for dynamic selection indicate that transitory performance dips preceding switches between school types do not strongly bias our estimates. Differences in performance do not seem to be due to school characteristics such as average class size and teacher experience. Analyses of differential impacts by student race and ethnicity suggest that charters may benefit some students more than others. Finally, an alternative test score measure indicates that charter schools at the middle school level may focus less on state -developed content standards than traditional public schools. My second paper investigates the relationships between measures of conflict and group composition and economic and social variables in US primary and secondary schools. Racial tension occurs most often when there is no majority group. More of it occurs when Asians or whites are the largest group than when blacks or Hispanics are the largest group. It is most prevalent in middle schools, and occurs more frequently in larger schools than smaller schools. When the race of the largest group is controlled for, racial tension increases with poverty, indicating there may be an economic component to racial tension. I find no strong evidence for any relationship between racial tension and between-group income disparities. I also find no evidence that recent changes in school racial composition are related to racial tension. Racial diversity in schools is associated with more racial tension, but not more violent activity or more gang activity. My third paper analyzes a panel of United States areas to investigate the contention that rising income inequality may increase crime rates. I first replicate findings from previous research that a strong positive correlation between local crime rates and local household income inequality appears across specifications in cross- section ordinary least squares regressions. I then demonstrate that the positive relationship between inequality and crime does not survive, and in fact reverses in some cases once local fixed effects are controlled for. I discuss and examine the possible reasons for this statistical reversal. While rising income inequality may have some negative social consequences, I find no strong evidence that it causes increased crime, at least in the short-term