This week I have the pleasure of introducing Dr. Anna Aizer, professor of economics at Brown University and editor-in-chief at the Journal of Human Resources. I am a long time admirer of Dr. Aizer’s work and have followed her career with curiosity for a long time. Some of her papers imprinted pretty strongly on me. I’ll just briefly mention one.

Her 2015 article in the prestigious Quarterly Journal of Economics with Joe Doyle on juvenile incarceration, for instance, has haunted me for many many years. It was the first or second paper I had seen at the time that had used the now popular “leniency design” to examine the causal effect of being incarcerated as a youth on high school completion and other outcomes as well as adult incarceration. Simply comparing those outcomes for those incarcerated and those not incarcerated as a kid will not reveal the causal effect of juvenile incarceration if juvenile incarceration suffers from selection bias on unobservable confounders. So Dr. Aizer with Joe Doyle used a clever approach to overcome that problem in which they found quasi-random variation, disconnected from the unobserved confounder, in juvenile incarceration caused by the random assignment of juvenile judges. As these judges varied in the propensity to sentence kids, they effectively utilized the judges’ own decisions as life changing lotteries which they then used to study the effect of juvenile incarceration on high school and adult incarceration. And the findings were bleak, depressing, enraging, upsetting, sad, all the emotions. They found that indeed being assigned to a more strict judge substantially raised one’s chances of being sentenced as a kid. Using linked administrative data connecting each of those kids to their Chicago Public School data as well as Cook County incarceration data, they then found that being incarcerated significantly increased the effect of committing a criminal offense as an adult, and it decreased the probability of finishing high school. The kids, best they could tell, mostly didn’t return after their juvenile incarceration, but if they did return, they were more likely to be given a emotional and behavioral disorder label in the data. My interpretation was always severe — incarceration had scarred the kids, traumatizing them, and they weren’t the same.

The paper would haunt me for various personal reasons as I saw a loved one arrested and spent time in jail on numerous occasions. I would see kids in my local community who had grown up with our kids arrested and think of Dr. Aizer' and Joe Doyle’s study, concluding the most important thing I could do was bail them out. The paper was one of many events in my own life that led me to transition my research to mental illness within corrections and self harm attempts by inmates even.

But there’s other personal reasons I wanted to interview Dr. Aizer. Dr. Aizer went to UCLA where she studied with Janet Currie, Adriana Lleras-Muney and Guido Imbens. Recall that when Imbens was denied tenure at Harvard, he went to UCLA. Currie, who had attended Princeton at the same time as Angrist, Imbens’ coauthor on many papers on instrumental variables in the 1990s, was an original economist focused on the family, but unlike Becker and others, brought with her that focused attention to finding variation in data that could plausibly recover causal effects. The story, in other words, of Princeton’s Industrial Relations Section and design based causal inference, going back to Orley Ashenfelter, was spreading through the profession through the placements of scholars at places like UCLA, which is where Dr. Aizer was a student. In this storyline in my head, Dr. Aizer was a type of first generation member of the credibility revolution, and I wanted to talk to her not only for her scholarly work’s influence on me, but also because I wanted to continue tracing Imbens and Angrist’s influence on the profession through UCLA.

The interview, though, was warm and interesting throughout. Dr. Aizer is a bright light in the profession working on important questions in the family, poverty and public policy. For anyone interested in the hardships of our communities and neighborhoods, I highly recommend to you her work.

Now let me beg for your support. Scott’s Substack and the podcast, Mixtape with Scott, are user supported. If your willingness to pay for the episodes and the explainers (I’m going to write some more I promise!), please consider becoming a subscriber!

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Transcript

Scott Cunningham:

In this week's episode of the Mix Tape podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Anna Aizer, professor of economics at Brown University in Rhode Island and editor in chief of the Journal of Human Resources. I have had a keen interest in Anna Aizer and her career and her work for a couple of reasons. Actually a lot, but here's two. First, she did her PhD at UCLA when Janet Currie was there, as well as when Guido Imbens was there. Imbens taught there after he left Harvard, for those of you that remember that interview I did with him. Recall my overarching conviction that Princeton's industrial relations section, which was where Orley Ashelfeltner, David Card, Alan Kruger, Bob Lalonde, Josh Angrist originated from, as well as Janet Currie.

My conviction that this was the ground zero of design based causal inference. And that design based causal inference spread through economics, not really through econometrics, and econometrics textbooks, but really through applied people. She also worked with Adriana Lleras-Muney, who's also at UCLA now, who was a student of Rajeev Dehejia, who wrote a seminal work in economics using propensity score, who was also Josh Angrist’s student at MIT. So you can see, Anna fits my obsession with a sociological mapping out of the spread of causal inference through the applied community.

But putting aside Anna as being instrumentally interesting, I am directly interested in her and her work on domestic violence and youth incarceration among other things. I've followed it super closely, teach a lot of these papers all the time, think about them even more. In this episode, we basically walked through her early life in Manhattan to her time at Amherst College, to her first jobs working in nonprofits, in areas of reform and poverty, to graduate school. We talked about her thoughts about domestic violence and poverty and crime along the way, too. And it was just a real honor and a pleasure to get to talk to her. I hope you like it as much as me. My name is Scott Cunningham and this is Mix Tape podcast. Okay. It's really great to introduce my guest this week on the podcast, Anna Aizer. Anna, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Anna Aizer:

Pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Scott Cunningham:

Before we get started, could you tell us obviously your name and your training and where you work?

Anna Aizer:

Sure. I'm a professor of economics at Brown University. I did my PhD at UCLA oh many years ago. Before that actually I got a masters in public health. Sorry. I have a strong public health interest and focus in a lot of my work. I'm also currently the co-director of the NBR program on children. That is a program at the NBR that is focused entirely on the economics of children and families. I'm the editor in chief of the Journal of Human Resources.

Scott Cunningham:

Great. It's so nice to meet in person. I've been a long time reader of your papers because you write about these topics on violence against women. There's not a lot of people in economics that do. And the way that you approach it shares a lot of my own thoughts. I'm going to talk about it later, but it's really nice to meet in person.

Anna Aizer:

Sure. Nice to meet you, too.

Scott Cunningham:

Okay. I want to break up the conversation a little bit into your life. First part, just talk about your life growing up. And then the second part, I want to talk about research stuff. So where did you grow up?

Anna Aizer:

I grew up in New York City.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, okay.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah, I did.

Scott Cunningham:

Which, borough was it?

Anna Aizer:

Manhattan.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, okay.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Yeah. Upper side. But when I went off to college, I went to rural Massachusetts.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I went to Amherst, which is a very small liberal arts college in the Berkshires. That was a very different experience for me. And believe it or not, I was not an econ major.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, you weren't?

Anna Aizer:

In fact I was not. I only took one econ course my entire four years in college.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, wow. Wait, so what'd you major in?

Anna Aizer:

I majored in American studies with a focus on colonial American history and literature.

Scott Cunningham:

Mm. On literature. Oh, that's what I majored in, too.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. So early American history. So what, was this was the 1700s or even-

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. So I did a lot of 17, 1800s, a lot of the New Republic period. My undergraduate thesis was actually on girls schooling in the Early Republic.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh wow. What was the deal with girls schooling in the Early Republic?

Anna Aizer:

What was the deal with the girls schooling? Well, it depends. For most of the Northeast, the focused on girls schooling was really this idea that it was a new country, they were going to have to have leaders in this new country, and someone had to educate those leaders. Someone had to educate those little boys to grow up, to go ahead and lead this country. And so the idea was, well, we had to start educating moms so that they could rear boys who could then go on to this great nation.

Scott Cunningham:

I see. Women's education was an input in male leadership?

Anna Aizer:

That's correct.

Scott Cunningham:

Got it. Got it. Wow. Okay. Well, that's interesting. I get that. You start educating women though, I suspect that you get more than just male leaders.

Anna Aizer:

I think that's right. It was an unintended consequence.

Scott Cunningham:

Unintended consequence. They didn't think that far ahead. Okay.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. That's a very good point to make, because two women who were educated in one of the first schools dedicated to educating women so that they could go on and rear their boys to be strong leaders were Katherine Beecher, who went on to create one of the most important girls schools in Troy, New York. And Harriet Beecher Stowe of course, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Scott Cunningham:

They're related?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. They are sisters. They are sisters.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, they're sisters.

Anna Aizer:

They were one of the first sets of girls who were educated in this mindset of we need leaders so let's have some educated moms. And they of course had other ideas and they went and formed schools and wrote incredibly important works of fiction that ended up playing a pretty significant role in the Civil War.

Scott Cunningham:

Wow. Was this the thing over in England too? Or was this just an American deal?

Anna Aizer:

I don't know the answer to that.

Scott Cunningham:

Huh. I guess they have a different production function for leaders in England where as we it's very decentralized here or something. Right?

Anna Aizer:

Right. So you're saying in England they already had their system of you go to Eaten, and then you go to Cambridge or Oxford. Right. I think that's probably right. So we didn't have that here.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. That's right. I mean, you're creating everything from scratch. And with such a reactionary response to England who knows what kinds of revolutionary approaches you're taking to... That's probably pretty revolutionary, right? Say we're going to teach women even though it's in order to produce male leaders, it's still thinking outside the box a little bit.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I suppose that's true. Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

That's cool. How come you didn't end up in... So you end up at Amherst. As a kid in Manhattan, what were you doing? You were reading books and stuff? You were a big reader?

Anna Aizer:

I suppose. Yeah. I suppose so.

Scott Cunningham:

Is that what drew you to Amherst, a liberal arts college?

Anna Aizer:

I don't really know. I don't think I actually knew what I wanted until much later in life. I was an American studies major, which at the time I learned a lot. It took me a while to gravitate to economics. Once I did, it was clear that that was really the right path for me.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. One question I want to leave your kid. So your parents let you ride the subway when you were a little kid?

Anna Aizer:

Oh yes.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh gosh. I bet that was so cool.

Anna Aizer:

Oh yes. I grew up in New York City during the '70s and '80s, which was far more dangerous than it was today. But at that time parents had a much more hands off approach to parenting. I think I was eight years old when I started taking public transportation by myself.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh my gosh. There was latch key parents back then?

Anna Aizer:

Sure.

Scott Cunningham:

So you jump on the subway. Where are you going at eight years old in Manhattan?

Anna Aizer:

You go to school.

Scott Cunningham:

You're just catching the subway to go to school?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, that's so cool. I bet you had a great childhood.

Anna Aizer:

I have to say it was pretty good.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh man.

Anna Aizer:

I can't complain.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. I grew up in a small town in Mississippi, but it was the same kind of thing. Well, it was very different than Manhattan, but just being able to have that level of... It's all survivor bias. The other kids that are getting really neglected and abused. But those of us that made it out a lot it's like, all you have is great memories of being able to do whatever.

Anna Aizer:

Right. Agreed.

Scott Cunningham:

So you wrote this thesis. At Amherst, did everybody write a thesis? Is that real common?

Anna Aizer:

Most people did. I think a third of the students wrote a thesis. It was very common.

Scott Cunningham:

But you're gravitating towards research, though?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. So it was clear that I really, really enjoyed that a lot. In fact, more recently in my economic research I have done a lot more historical work than I had done initially. So I think that training has really come in handy.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. What did you like about that project that you wrote your thesis on? What did it make-

Anna Aizer:

Well, it was really a lot of fun. I focused on two schools in particular. I focused on this school in Lichfield, Connecticut, and another school in Pennsylvania, a Quaker school in Westtown. I focused on those two schools because those two schools, for whatever reason, kept a lot of their records. They have really wonderful-

Scott Cunningham:

Oh my God. You had their records?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. So you have really wonderful archives where you could just go through and read all about what they were thinking about, when they founded the schools, what the curriculum should be like. And even some of the writings of some of the students and teachers.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh my gosh.

Anna Aizer:

So it was really just a tremendous amount of fun to read all of that stuff, all that primary materials.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh my gosh. Wait. Did you actually have the names of the kids? Did you see their-

Anna Aizer:

Sure. They had all of that.

Scott Cunningham:

Did you have the census records and stuff?

Anna Aizer:

Oh, I guess you could. I mean, this was so long ago before people were doing all that cool linking, but yeah, you absolutely could.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, that's so neat. I wonder where those kids ended up. What did it make you feel doing that research, that was so original and just being out there in these archives?

Anna Aizer:

Well, it was just amazing how much you could learn by just peeking into people's lives. It was really exciting. It was really fun. And you just felt like you were discovering something new.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you liked that. But that's interesting because some people would be like, oh, discovering something new. I don't even care about that. When you were discovering something new, you were like, I like this feeling.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Yeah. I really did.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah.

Anna Aizer:

I really did.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. So what happened? So you graduate?

Anna Aizer:

I graduated. My first job was actually working for an Alternative To Incarceration program in New York City. So I moved back home. You have to remember, this was early mid '90s, and this was the peak in terms of crime rates in the country, and in New York City in particular. And the jails-

Scott Cunningham:

Before you say this, when you were growing up, did your parents... Was it like people were cognizant... I mean, now you know, oh, it was the peak because it's fallen so much, but what was the conversation like as a kid about crime?

Anna Aizer:

In the '90s in New York City at this time, that was really the crack cocaine epidemic, so there was a lot of talk about that. That really did dominate a lot of the media at the time. It really was a big concern.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Yeah.

Anna Aizer:

As we know, the city and the state, not just in New York, but nationally, really responded with very tough on crime approach, started incarcerating a lot of people. So much so that they were really out of space in the New York City jail. So Rikers Island was at capacity, even upstate prisons were pretty full. The city, not because they were concerned that we were putting too many people in jail, which has... After the fact we know that we did put too many people in jail, that there was a cost to these incredibly high incarceration rates.

Anna Aizer:

At the time, the concern was that we don't have enough space, so what are we going to do? The city funded an Alternative To Incarceration program for youth. It was called the Court Employment Project. It was really focused on kids between the ages of 16 and 21 who were charged with a felony in New York state Supreme Court. And these were kids who were being charged as adults, treated as adults in the system. New York City has since raised the age of majority, but at that time it was 16. So we were focused on really younger 16 to 21. Well then, most of the kids we were working with were 16 to 18.

Scott Cunningham:

What kind of felonies are we talking about? Is this the drug felonies? Or is it [inaudible 00:15:51]?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. So a lot of it was possession with intent to sell, selling. But also robbery, that was pretty common as well. We were only working with kids that were facing at least six months in adult prison, essentially. That was the rule for our program. Because again, our program was really focused on trying to reduce the number of people who were being detained and incarcerated for long periods of time. So we were only dealing with people who had-

Scott Cunningham:

Wait, real quick. So you're in your early 20s?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. So I would've been about 23.

Scott Cunningham:

How'd you find this gig? You were just going back to New York City? Or what was the deal?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I knew I wanted to go back home. At that time, jobs were advertised in the paper, so you looked through the help wanted ads and you just sent cover letters and resumes by mail to whatever jobs appealed to you. I was interested in those jobs. I was also interested in working with public defenders, so the Legal Aid Society in New York, I applied for a number of jobs there.

Scott Cunningham:

Where's this coming from? What's your values exactly at this time? You're concerned about poverty or concerned about something? What's the deal?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I think I guess I already was really worried. I was really concerned about low income kids who were really... I felt already were getting derailed at very young ages in a way that I thought would be very hard for them to recover. I think that in that sense was really confirmed when I started working that these were kids who in a split minute their lives were just totally changed. So certainly in the case of things like robberies, these were often group of kids with not much to do, just getting into trouble, and it just getting too far too quick. And before they knew it, they were facing two to six years. I mean, it was just really tragic.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know. Six months. You think about it, too. You're looking at these six months in the program. You start looking at six months and you think, oh, that's six months. The thing is, those things cascade, because six months with a felony record serving prison becomes de facto a cycle of repeated six months, one year, two years.

Anna Aizer:

Sure.

Scott Cunningham:

You just end up... Well, that's going to be a paper that you end up writing, so I'll hold off on that. Okay. So you end up applying, you spray the city with all these resumes. And then this thing. So what is this company? This is a nonprofit?

Anna Aizer:

Yep. So it's a nonprofit that had a contract with the city. They had a contract with the city. Again, they were funded really because the city could not afford to put any more people on Rikers Island.

Scott Cunningham:

So it's like a mass incarceration response almost?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

Capacity constraints.

Anna Aizer:

They were at capacity, so they needed to do something. So what this program was, it was an intensive supervision program. The kids had to come in at least twice a week and meet with a counselor. The counselor would provide counseling services and also check in on them, make sure they were going to school or working or getting their GED. And then they would write up these long reports.

Anna Aizer:

I only worked in the courts, so I wasn't doing any of the counseling myself. I had no qualifications to do that. I worked in the courts, so my job was to screen kids for eligibility for the program, interview them, see if they were good candidates. Then talk to their families, talk to their lawyers. And then talk to the judge eventually about the program and about what we would be doing and why we thought this person was a good candidate. And then once they were in the program, I would then provide updates or reports back to the judge and the defense attorney to let them know how the individual was doing.

Scott Cunningham:

And wait. What is the treatment going to be that things are doing?

Anna Aizer:

Again, so it was really-

Scott Cunningham:

It's a deferment of you're going to go to jail?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. That's exactly right. It was a six month program. If they made it through after six months, they would be sentenced to probation instead of jail time.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. They would refer adjudication type concept.

Anna Aizer:

Exactly.

Scott Cunningham:

Right. Yeah.

Anna Aizer:

Exactly. So that was the idea.

Scott Cunningham:

But it's non random. And I know you're not-

Anna Aizer:

It was, yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

You're not thinking about the future Anna Aizer [inaudible 00:21:17], but it's not random.

Anna Aizer:

No.

Scott Cunningham:

What is it conditioned on? Because you're doing all of it, right?

Anna Aizer:

Right. Right. So you look at a kid's record. You would look at whether or not the kid seem to have support. The downside was if a kid didn't make it through the program they might be sentenced to more time-

Scott Cunningham:

Really?

Anna Aizer:

than they would have... Maybe. I mean, the judge would-

Scott Cunningham:

Why? Because you're getting a new judge or something?

Anna Aizer:

No, it's the same judge. But the judges say, "Look, I'm going to give you a chance. Instead of sending you away now for six to 18, I'm going to give you an opportunity to prove yourself. Six months, stay out of trouble, complete this program. And then I'm going to send you to probation. But if you don't complete the program, I'm going to sentence you more." In the end, they might not have actually done that. They certainly didn't tie their hands in any way.

Scott Cunningham:

What do they doing? Why are they doing that? Why is a judge doing that? They're trying to deal with some sort of adverse selection or something? They don't want people to-

Anna Aizer:

They want to create an incentive for the kid to-

Scott Cunningham:

They're trying to create an incentive for the kid. Got it. Okay.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. They-

Scott Cunningham:

Like a little scared straight thing?

Anna Aizer:

A little. I mean, the judges always think that. It's not clear that that works. I don't think that really matters so much in the decision making of young people. I think it's-

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Totally. Totally.

Anna Aizer:

But that certainly was on the mind I think of many of the judges.

Scott Cunningham:

It's funny though. When I think about this paper that we're going to talk about a little bit, it's like you're already aware of, oh, these judges have a little bit of discretion. They're saying a bunch of stuff that's not in the law. "If you don't do this, I'm going to give you penalize, I'm going to give you really bad grade at the end with another year in prison." Did that cross your mind that you were noticing that judges were... This judge does that and this other judge does not tend to do that, is that something you could have noticed?

Anna Aizer:

Absolutely.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, wow.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. So there were many, many judges. So this is Manhattan. This is the main criminal courts in Manhattan, so I had many, many judges, a lot of people. The way it works is once you've been indicted on a felony you come before one of these three judges. They're called conference judges. They try to dispose of the case. Either the case gets dismissed or they take the plea deal. But if that doesn't happen, they reach into a bin, literally a lottery-

Scott Cunningham:

It's like a bingo ball machine?

Anna Aizer:

It's a lottery with all these different judges' courtrooms. They pull out a number, and that's the number of the courtroom you get assigned to. You know right then if you get assigned to certain judges, for sure that kid is going to do jail time. And if you get assigned to other judges, for sure that kid is going to get probation.

Scott Cunningham:

Who knows this? The kids don't.

Anna Aizer:

The kids don't, but they don't know it.

Scott Cunningham:

They can't comprehend.

Anna Aizer:

But their attorney will know it.

Scott Cunningham:

And then maybe their parents.

Anna Aizer:

No, I don't think their parents would know.

Scott Cunningham:

Although, who in a group of kids that maybe their parents aren't as-

Anna Aizer:

I don't think their parents would know it, either. You would know it because you have to remember that all of the judges for the most part were either defense attorneys or prosecutors before they were judges, and you can tell. The judges who would-

Scott Cunningham:

Is that the main source of the discretion that you notice?

Anna Aizer:

I think so. I think so. I think the judges who previously prosecute-

Scott Cunningham:

I mean, they're such different. It does seem like the prosecutors and the defense attorneys are almost cut from a completely different worldview and set of values.

Anna Aizer:

I think that's right.

Scott Cunningham:

I had this friend that was a public defender in Athens and he was like... I think this is what he said. I'm not going to say his name because he probably didn't say this, but I thought he basically said, "I don't like prosecutors because they think they are always guilty."

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

And you could tell. The public defender, they were like, "My whole job is to not do that." I could just imagine that shaping... Either there's a lot of selection into that or that just really... You hear that all the time. There's got to be human capital with that.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I agree. I think they have a different perspective, which is what draws them to either defense work or prosecutorial work. But then you have to remember their jobs are really very different. So the prosecutor he or she is just dealing with the victims, so that's who they're talking to all day. The defense attorney is talking to the defendant and getting to know them and their families. They really just have very different sympathies. And the judges come from one or the other.

Scott Cunningham:

One or the other.

Anna Aizer:

So you can see it.

Scott Cunningham:

So you're a kid, you're young person. What are you feeling over the course of working with this? Tell me a little bit about your growth and the thoughts that you're thinking about.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I really felt like these were kids that just got derailed, that these were kids, they were in a very tough situation. They made a decision and they had no idea what the consequences of that were going to be. Nor should they have. They were 16. It's very hard to know where these things end up. I did feel as though the criminal justice system was way too harsh.

Scott Cunningham:

You could tell. Because the whole point of this nonprofit you're working on is a response to such an excessive amount of penalization. They literally don't have any room.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. They don't have any room for anybody.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. They had no room. That's exactly right.

Scott Cunningham:

We're doing so much punishment we can't even do it right.

Anna Aizer:

That's exactly right. In the juvenile and criminal justice system, more generally, there's a disproportionate involvement of Black and Hispanic youth.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah.

Anna Aizer:

But they are 100% poor.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Right.

Anna Aizer:

So that's the other thing. And that just seemed incredibly unfair to me.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Anna Aizer:

And it's not the case that not poor kids don't also mess up. They do.

Scott Cunningham:

They just can avoid the 10,000... There's 10,000 events from the mess up to the things that these kids are facing in this program that they have many ways of mitigating it.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. That's right.

Scott Cunningham:

There's even in terms of parents spending a ton of money, or just saying you can't hang out with these people. There's a bunch of stuff that poor families just are like... So you're feeling heavyhearted.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

You could have gone in a different direction. You could have not gone to graduate school or gone to get this master's. What's the decision criteria where you're thinking I've got to go in a new direction?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. At a certain point I just felt as though I needed more training. I wanted more of a professional degree, so I got a degree in public health where you learned a lot about the health system and financing and the social determinants of health. I felt like I needed, again, more training. I should say, I went from that job, not directly back to graduate school, but I went and I worked in not a homeless shelter, but a service center for homeless people also in New York City. I went from the criminal justice system to the homeless system. I was there for another year. And then I went back to school.

Scott Cunningham:

To what, two or three years total between Amherst and graduate school?

Anna Aizer:

That's correct. Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah.

Anna Aizer:

That's correct.

Scott Cunningham:

It's interesting you go to public health because I think a lot of people that don't know anything about anything, they'll be like, well, she's doing criminal justice so I could have seen her going to law school. Now she's going to the homeless thing. Okay, well, maybe she could do social work. What were the things you were thinking of? And how did you end up choosing public health? Because a lot of people don't associate either of those things with public health. They heard the word health.

Anna Aizer:

Right. So a couple things. One, I thought about law school, but I felt as though lawyers deal with the problem after it's happened.

Scott Cunningham:

Right.

Anna Aizer:

And I felt like maybe we should focus more on preventing.

Scott Cunningham:

Right.

Anna Aizer:

And the other thing, when I worked with homeless people I really did start to feel like this was a homeless individuals... Homeless families are different. I worked with homeless single adults, and for the most part in New York City at that time, all of the homeless single adults had serious mental health problems.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Right.

Anna Aizer:

I really came to see homelessness as a public health problem.

Scott Cunningham:

A mental health problem.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

They hit public health. Got it.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

Right. Right.

Anna Aizer:

So that's really how... I could have done social work, but that's not really what I wanted to do.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. But it's funny you say preventative. To me when I hear that I'm thinking, oh, Anna's already starting to think about public policy.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I think I was.

Scott Cunningham:

I wouldn't necessarily think that if you were to tell me you went and got a master's in social work.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. No, I think that's [inaudible 00:31:54]-

Scott Cunningham:

Because that cold be clinical or much more working with the... You would've had that experience and you'd be like, I want to work with these families. But that's not what you thought, so something else is going on. So you're thinking I want to do what?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I think I really was interested in policy already then.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. And that makes the masters of public health make a lot of sense.

Anna Aizer:

Correct. Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

I see. So where'd you end up going, Harvard?

Anna Aizer:

I went to Harvard. Yeah. I got a masters in health policy and administration. And then I moved to DC. I worked for Mathematica policy research for two years, and I learned a lot about policy research.

Scott Cunningham:

Are you getting a quantitative training at the master's of public health when you went?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah, so that's where I really took my first micro theory class and my first statistics class. So I took biostatistics and micro theory there. And when I worked at Mathematica, I worked with a lot of economists. So most of the senior researchers at Mathematica were economists by training. That's where I really got exposure to the way economists think about, research and policy evaluation. It was then that I decided I wanted to go back and get a PhD in economics.

Scott Cunningham:

Okay. So what was it? What's the deal? Why do you like economics at this point?

Anna Aizer:

The senior researchers at Mathematica were either economists or sociologists or political scientists. I just felt like the economists had a very clear way in which they set up problems. I think that goes back to economic models of decision making.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Right.

Anna Aizer:

And it just struck me that that was just a very good way to conceptualize almost any problem. I also liked the way they thought about data. I think the people that I worked most closely with and came to admire were all economists. So that's how that-

Scott Cunningham:

And how long were you there? Were you doing public policy stuff at Mathematica?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I was doing a lot of evaluations of Medicaid programs. In particular, Medicaid managed care, moving from a different financing model for Medicaid and evaluating that, and various settings, and writing them policy briefs so that... God. It was either two or three years, I can't really remember, maybe three years. I think I was there three years and then I went back to graduate school.

Scott Cunningham:

And then you go to UCLA?

Anna Aizer:

And then I went to UCLA.

Scott Cunningham:

Am I right that you were working mainly with Janet Curry?

Anna Aizer:

Yes. So Janet Curry was my-

Scott Cunningham:

You worked pretty closely with her?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. She was my main advisor. The other folks I worked with were Joe Huts and Jeff Grogger.

Scott Cunningham:

And who?

Anna Aizer:

Jeff Grogger.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, Jeff Grogger?

Anna Aizer:

None of whom are there anymore.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Right. I'm just curious. I associate you a lot with... Because I wrote that book on causal inference I'm obsessed with the causal inference stuff in all these weird ways, with all the people. I see Princeton industrial relations section, Card, Angres, et cetera. And then I see Janet Curry. And then I see you at UCLA, and I associate you so much with that methodological approach, especially for some of the papers that I've known really well. Did you get a sense when you were at UCLA, oh, this is causal inference, this is different, this is the credibility revolution? Or was it just really subtle, or this is just how you do empirical work?

Anna Aizer:

That's a great question. So I should also say that my first year econometrics teacher was Hero Inmans.

Scott Cunningham:

Was it, really?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Hero [inaudible 00:36:18] UCLA.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh my gosh. I didn't know that.

Anna Aizer:

For a short period of time. I was lucky enough that he was there when I was there. So he taught me in my first and my second years. So of course he was very much big part of this. And actually Enrico Moretti was also at UCLA when I was there, so I took courses with him. I think between Janet, Hero, Enrico and Joe Huts, they were really in the thick of it. That was the way it was done.

Scott Cunningham:

That was the way it was done.

Anna Aizer:

That was the way it was done.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. What did you learn? What do you think the salient concepts were that had you... This is a make believe, right? But I'm just saying, had you gone to a different school where you didn't have any of those people, what do you think the salient econometric causal inference kind of things were to you that you were like, oh, this is what I notice I keep doing over and over again, or keep thinking about?

Anna Aizer:

Well, I would say that the method was in service to the question. I feel as though I'm seeing it more these days. People, they find an experiment, a natural experiment, and then they figure out the question. That's not how I remember it. You had the question and then the method was in service to that question. I worry that that's getting a little bit lost these days, that people have the experiment and then they're searching for the question. I think that ends up being less interesting and less important.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There were certain economists, I think, that were so successful as approaching it that way. It seems like it was cut both ways, because it seems like applied causal inference grew on the back of that kind of natural experiment first, but it almost becomes... To a kid with a hammer, everything's a nail, so it's just like, look through the newspaper, look for a natural experiment. What can I do? How can I do this? How can I [handle 00:38:49]?

Scott Cunningham:

And it is funny. I don't think it's as satisfying too, just even emotionally. I guess you can find discoveries that way, like you were, but it does feel like you don't end up building up all the human capital with the importance of that question. It's almost like, you're like, well, how can I make this question really important? As opposed to it is important.

Anna Aizer:

Right.

Scott Cunningham:

What were you studying? I know what you were studying. At UCLA, what was the question that you were really captivated by?

Anna Aizer:

So I was really focused on health. You have to remember, I'd done a master's in public health and I just worked at Mathematica, so I was really focused on health. So really all of my dissertation was on health. My main dissertation chapter was actually on Medicaid in California. It was on the importance of enrolling kids early in Medicaids. I don't know if you know much about the Medicaid program, but there are many kids, 60% of kids, who are uninsured are actually eligible for the Medicaid program, but not enrolled in the Medicaid program. And that's partly because-

Scott Cunningham:

60%?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

Wow.

Anna Aizer:

We could reduce the number of kids who are uninsured in this country by more than half if you just enrolled all those kids who were eligible for Medicaid in the program.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah.

Anna Aizer:

And part of the-

Scott Cunningham:

We saw that in that Oregon Medicaid experiment.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Oregon was mostly adults. I don't know how these numbers differ for adults and kids. I'm really more focused on kids. It's partly by design because Medicaid is a program. If you show up at the hospital and you don't have insurance and you're eligible for Medicaid, the hospital will enroll you. And most people know that.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, is that right?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I mean, because they have every interest. They want to get paid, so they'll enroll you in the Medicaid program, but there's a cost to that. Because what that means is that kids, if parents know that once they go to the hospital their kid will be enrolled in the Medicaid program should they need hospitalization, they don't end up getting them enrolled prior to that. So they miss out on the ambulatory preventative care that might prevent them from being hospitalized to begin with. And that's partly because of the structure of the program, but that's also because the states made it difficult for kids to enroll in the Medicaid program. In California, there was a big change. The application for Medicaid used to be 20 pages long. Imagine that, right? They cut it down to four.

Scott Cunningham:

What kind of stuff are they asking on those 20 pages?

Anna Aizer:

Who knows? Who knows what they're asking.

Scott Cunningham:

Good grief. I mean, they're wanting them on there. Are they screening them out or are they just-

Anna Aizer:

I think that's partly what they were trying to do, right?

Scott Cunningham:

Screen them out? Because it's expensive.

Anna Aizer:

It's expensive.

Scott Cunningham:

You've got some of these legislators, they're like, this is expensive and I don't even want to do this so add a dozen pages.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. So just make it hard. Now, what happened in '97 was the child health insurance program, CHIP. And they said, "If you want CHIP money..." So that's federal money to ensure more kids. "If you want CHIP money, federal money, you are going to have to enroll more kids in the Medicaid program. You have to do outreach." So the states actually were forced, and that's actually what prompted California to go from a 20 page application to a four page application. They also spent about $20 million on advertisement and basically training community based organizations in how to complete a Medicaid application. So they train them. "Here, you can help your clients enroll in Medicaid. For every application that you help that ends up getting onto the Medicaid program we'll give you 50 bucks." And this really mattered. A lot of kids started enrolling in the Medicaid program who otherwise wouldn't, particularly Hispanic and Asian American kids.

Scott Cunningham:

Is this what your dissertation ends up being about?

Anna Aizer:

This is what my dissertation is about.

Scott Cunningham:

On both the shortening and the payment?

Anna Aizer:

So it was basically once they started doing this you started seeing big increases in the number of kids who were enrolled in the Medicaid program. And you saw declines in hospitalizations for things like asthma. Asthma is a condition for which if you're being seen and treated on an ambulatory basis, you shouldn't end up in the hospital.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh. Wait. So what's your control group and all this stuff?

Anna Aizer:

What the state did was they targeted different areas, and provided training to those community based organizations in how to complete a Medicaid application. So they gave me all that data.

Scott Cunningham:

Get out of here.

Anna Aizer:

So I had all the data.

Scott Cunningham:

So you're doing some IB thing? You're doing some-

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. It was, basically if you live in a neighborhood where a community based organization had already been trained then you were much more likely to be enrolled in the Medicaid program. So you can see that.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh my gosh. This is so cool. Were you excited when you found that?

Anna Aizer:

I was super excited.

Scott Cunningham:

I bet.

Anna Aizer:

I was super excited. This was so old. I was begging Medicaid to send me this data. Begging, begging, begging. And they weren't really answering. And then one day Janet came in to the office where all the graduate students sit, and she said, "I think I got this fax for you." She handed this 20 page fax that has all the data on what community organization got trained and when.

Scott Cunningham:

Okay. Anna, I want to ask a meta question real quick. You just said, these days people maybe start with natural experiment first, but originally it was question first. Okay. Not devil's advocate, but just a statement of facts. The one reason they may do that is because when you find these kinds of natural experiments or whatever, it almost just feels almost itself random. You're weren't even really looking for it. You read something in the newspaper, you're like, oh my gosh, they're doing this weird thing. And the risk of going question first is, you could have this incredibly important question, like the Medicaid project payment thing, and you're like, if everybody in my department, like Hero Inmans and Moretti and Curry, who are to answer a question either subtly or not so subtly, or to answer a question is going to require this credible design and we really need you to staple this dissertation together. You're going to have to have a-

Anna Aizer:

I think that's why you have lots-

Scott Cunningham:

It seems really risky. It seems really risky.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I think you have to have lots of ideas.

Scott Cunningham:

You have to have lots of ideas.

Anna Aizer:

I think you have lots of ideas. A good friend of mine in graduate school was Enrico Moretti's RA. He told me that Enrico had tons of ideas. Wes, this was my friend, his RA, would just do some really quick takes on all of these ideas. And if there was something there he'd pursue it. But if there was nothing there he'd drop it.

Scott Cunningham:

What does that mean, nothing there, something there? What does that mean?

Anna Aizer:

Either, if you can't find exaggerate variation or the exaggerate variation doesn't actually work, you don't have the first stage, he'd just drop it and move on to something else.

Scott Cunningham:

That's a skill. That's almost some therapeutic skill to be excited about something and willing to let it go.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's actually-

Scott Cunningham:

You got a lot of ideas?

Anna Aizer:

I had a lot of ideas. It never worked out.

Scott Cunningham:

Never worked out. And that's normal.

Anna Aizer:

I think that's normal.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. That's not a bad thing.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I think that's how research should go. In fact, I'm not as good as Enrico, I probably hold on to things for longer than I should.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Boy, where'd you end up publishing that work? I should know this, but I don't know.

Anna Aizer:

That published in Restat Review Economics Institute.

Scott Cunningham:

Oh, cool. So what'd you end up finding?

Anna Aizer:

So what I end up finding is if you pay these organizations to enroll... Well, a couple things. Advertisement, just blanketing the television and radio with information. Sign up for Medicaid, sign up for CHIP, that does not work at all.

Scott Cunningham:

Doesn't work?

Anna Aizer:

No.

Scott Cunningham:

Advertising doesn't work?

Anna Aizer:

It doesn't work. What works is having these communities organizations help families complete the application. That's incredibly important.

Scott Cunningham:

That's a supply demand kind of philosophy that you see in drugs, too. Mark Anderson has this paper on meth. They would post these advertisements of people that were addicted to meth. They look horrible. They lose their teeth and all this stuff. It didn't do anything.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like you're talking about a group of people. They're like, they need more assistance. They need somebody... You think about that thing you were saying earlier about these kids that are higher income versus lower income. When I said there were 10,000 steps that the higher income people had, it wasn't really like the kids, it was external forces that were investing, going after them.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Right.

Scott Cunningham:

It seems like incentives need to be targeted to people to go after. For whatever reason it is not enough to just simply have it. You need people going in and helping along the way.

Anna Aizer:

Right. Agreed. I agree. They need support.

Scott Cunningham:

They need support.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

Okay. So that is amazing. I bet your advisors were so proud of you for that project.

Anna Aizer:

I don't know.

Scott Cunningham:

I think so.

Anna Aizer:

You'd hope so, but that'll be icing on the cake.

Scott Cunningham:

Right. Exactly. Yeah. I guess that's not super important.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah, it is. You do always want your advisor... I mean, I had tremendous respect for all my advisors. So yeah, I'd be very pleased if they liked the work that I did. Basically, states did spend this money to enroll kids early, but it paid off because it meant that they were less likely to be hospitalized. In fact, some of these programs can be very much cost effective.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Yeah. I had told myself, I was like, well, I'm asking Anna about the juvenile incarceration paper with Joe Doyle. And then I was going to ask her about domestic violence. And I feel like I've got to make a hard choice now, because I don't have a lot of time. So I was thinking, well, let's see how this goes. And then we can fit. So domestic violence. First thing I want to ask is, how did you get interested in that topic? And when did it start? In a way I could almost imagine, oh, you've been thinking about domestic violence forever.

Anna Aizer:

Yes. So I actually-

Scott Cunningham:

You've been thinking about women ever since college.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. That's true. And made that connection. This was basically my first big project after I started at Brown. After my dissertation I was thinking, okay, what's my next big project going to be? And I think that's a very important decision for junior faculty to think about. After you finish publishing your dissertation you got to think about what's my next big project? Because it takes so long to publish anything in economics, that's really going to matter a lot. That might be the only thing you publish before you're coming up for tenure given how long.

Anna Aizer:

I was thinking about it, and I just felt like I didn't have a clear question in mind, but just been looking at the numbers it's incredibly prevalent, domestic violence. But it's also shown some pretty encouraging trends. Domestic violence against women has been declining pretty significantly. In the US, I think about... I haven't looked the number up recently, but it was about 1,000 women a year were being killed, and so many more actually are victims of domestic violence. And if you look at victimization surveys, between one and three and one in four women in the US report ever being the victim of domestic violence. It's really prevalent. And it just struck me, this is a big problem and I don't know how to answer it, but we should know more about it given just how prevalent it is. And so that's how I started.

Anna Aizer:

I have a good friend from high school, and she's a lawyer in New York City. She was working with victims of domestic violence. She's a lawyer by training. She used to say, "These women have nothing. They have no resources. They are so poor." That, to me, just made me think about, okay, I need to start thinking about income and resources and poverty and domestic violence, because clearly that's a big part of this.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. I feel like you and I ended up responding to the bargaining theory papers in the exact same way. That's when I was studying a lot of my stuff on couples and things and bad behavior on the part of the men, I was always thinking about sex ratios in the marriage market. Why I was thinking about that was the ability to exit the partnership could be really, really important. And I was curious. You can talk about people not having resources and not necessarily be thinking in terms of one of these Nash bargaining, like Manser and Brown, and McElroy and Horn, and Shelly Lundberg kinds of ways of thinking. I was curious, were you thinking about those theory papers a lot? Or am I just projecting?

Anna Aizer:

I had this friend, again, who was working and telling me just how poor many of the women she was working with were. And then once you actually look at the statistics, the survey statistics, it's true that any woman can be a victim of domestic violence, but it is really a poor woman problem. So it's very clear to me that poverty has a lot to do with it. It's because many of these women have no other source of support. They have low levels was in schooling. They have few prospects in the labor market. And they're really stuck. That is ultimately-

Scott Cunningham:

Stuck as in cannot leave.

Anna Aizer:

Cannot leave. I mean, they have a very-

Scott Cunningham:

Because that's the solution. That's one of the most important solutions, which is probably you need to leave the relationship.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Or you need to be able to threaten to leave.

Scott Cunningham:

You need to be able to threaten to leave. How important do you think the credible threat is? Because my sense is, that's to an economist, because they're like, you should thinking about unions and stuff. They're like, oh, credible threats. That's all you got to, you have to do it. I feel like, I don't know if that really works. I actually think the truth is you're going to have to leave. And maybe there's some marginal guy. We're talking about the marginal guy, but whatever, that's the info marginal, whatever. The extensive marginal guy, he's got narcissism personality disorder, substance abuse problems.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. You may be right.

Scott Cunningham:

He's got major, major problems. And that stuff is very inelastic to everything.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. You may be right. I can't answer this because I don't know for sure. At the same time I remember talking to some folks about this, and their feeling was that it's all a continuum of a bad relationship. Violence may be one extreme, but relationships have ebbs and flows. They can be better at some points and worse at others. So they did feel as though a relationship didn't always have to be violent, that you could have relationships that were violent at one point but then were no longer. Of course, you also have relationships in which that's not the case, and the only solution is to leave. But there could very well be relationships where you can have better and worse periods.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. The reason why I bring it up is because I feel like these days you hear a lot about mental health. Well, you hear about mental health period, but in domestic violence there'll be also an emerging story of the narcissist personality disorder. I've been always lately thinking, I've been like, I wonder if this is true. Anecdotally, what you see a lot is how manipulative... And that's like a very judgemental way of putting it, but I don't know how else to say it. How manipulative one of the person can be towards the other where they're like, "Well, if you loved me..." They get all this trepped up stories about love. What love becoming almost this story.

Scott Cunningham:

I've wondered for those people that can't or won't... It's actually won't, right? They can leave. I mean, there are some people they will be literally harmed if they leave, so I'm not talking about those people. But I mean, the person that literally you're watching an equilibrium where they don't leave, I've wondered lately if it's like, the victim is all tangled up with loyalty and love.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Sure.

Scott Cunningham:

And it is taken advantage of by a person that no one can tell them not to love this person. That's nobody's business.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is a really complicated thing.

Scott Cunningham:

It is so complicated. It is so complicated. Finding the policies that provide resources to a person. Some of that might be a person that's at those earlier ebbs too, those earlier ebbs in the bad relationship. And you're like, well, some people may not be ready to leave yet.

Anna Aizer:

I mean, this a thing where I do think the right policy response is providing resources to women, but also probably interventions aimed at the assailant is probably going to be just as effective. Sorry. My phone is ringing.

Scott Cunningham:

That's okay.

Anna Aizer:

Hello. Sorry about that. I thought it might be my kids.

Scott Cunningham:

I wonder about these battery courts. Have you heard about these [inaudible 01:00:05] courts?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I mean, they're-

Scott Cunningham:

I wonder what you know about those?

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Not a lot, I would say.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. These issues of poverty and mental health and all of these things interacting in order to get healing and healthy meaningful lives to all everyone is... I do think this is something that economists can offer, but it's not something that... I wouldn't say there's a ton of people. You're one of a small number of people working on domestic violence, it seems like.

Anna Aizer:

It's a very hard thing to study. Data's very difficult to come by for obvious reasons, for a good reason. I mean, this is data that needs to be protected. Glenn Ludwig and the crime lab in Chicago, they're doing work around violence reduction more generally. And probably many of those principles and findings probably relate to domestic violence as well, changing the behavior of young people so that they are less quick to react and less quick to react in a violent way. When they do, we would probably have some pretty important spillover to domestic violence as well, I think.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Anna Aizer:

I think there are ways to reduce violence more generally that would probably apply to the setting of domestic violence.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. It's funny, circling back to that judge who threatens with higher penalties. I think economists, when they think about violence and things like that, you're an exception for thinking about outside options and stuff like that, but the shadow of Gary Becker's deterrence hypothesis, it can just be this straight jacket for a lot of people, because they just only think in terms of relative price changes on the punishment margins. When you talk to psychologists, or you read that psychology literature about narcissism or borderline personality disorder or substance abuse, you're talking about a group of people that are, for variety of reasons, have really low discount rates or just have beliefs that things don't apply to them. Or in no uncertain terms, the elasticities of violent behavior with respect to some unknown punishment that you don't even know if it's going to real, it just seems like, we don't really know, but [inaudible 01:03:06] really big.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. So there was this criminologist named Mark Kleiman. Do you know that name?

Scott Cunningham:

Oh yeah. Mark Kleiman. Yeah. Yeah.

Anna Aizer:

I mean his big thing was, it should be swift, sure and short. That's how we should do punishment. He felt as though that would be far preferable to the system in which there's uncertainty. But if it doesn't work out, you're going to spend a lot of time in jail. He thought that was a fair model.

Scott Cunningham:

The thing is, though, swift certain and did you say short?

Anna Aizer:

Short.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Well, with prison sentences lingering on your record it is by definition never short.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

You face these labor market scarrings and you can't get housing, you can't get jobs and that does not go away. So even if the prison sentence is short, the person... I just feel like this is the tension around violence in the country, which is punishment has so many margins where it is permanent. It's got so many margins. And just being in a cage is only one of them.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. I mean, particularly for young people, jail is incredibly scarring.

Scott Cunningham:

Incredibly scarring. Incredibly scarring. We've been studying suicide attempts in the jail and we-

Anna Aizer:

Yes, that's right.

Scott Cunningham:

We walked the jail for this one particular jail. I have never in my life seen anything like that. I've been working on this project for four years. I hadn't walked to the jail. I don't know. It's not the first thing that came to my mind. The team finally walked the jail. I spent the whole day there. The jails have so much mental illness in it. They just are in... It's not even cages. A cage has... Air gets in. It's a sealed box. It's like Houdini's box. They stay there, and for a variety of regulatory reasons and so forth, they stay in there. Can't have a lot of materials if they are at risk. If they've come in with psychosis because of substance abuse or underlying mental illness stuff, they might get moved into certain types of physical quarters. I just can't even imagine, just in an hour, let alone... And that's just jail. That's not even prison. It's just absolutely a trauma box.

Scott Cunningham:

Unfortunately, we didn't get to talk about your paper with Joe Doyle on the juvenile incarceration. But every time I teach that juvenile incarceration paper, where kids were incarcerated as a young person, and then end up not going back. It's not even the future prison part, it's the not going back to high school.

Anna Aizer:

Oh, of course.

Scott Cunningham:

And then when they go back, they're labeled with a behavioral emotional disorder. It's really like anybody that's had any exposure to a kid involved in corrections, you're like, oh, I know exactly what that is. They were traumatized. You don't even have to come up with some exotic economic theory. They were traumatized. That's why they come back to school with a behavioral emotional disorder. It is [inaudible 01:06:59].

Anna Aizer:

Yep. That's good.

Scott Cunningham:

That paper is one of the most important papers I have personally ever read. I teach it nonstop. And I've even cried teaching it in class. I get so emotional when I get to that part, because, I don't know about you, but it seems like it's really hard not to come away with... A lot of papers you read, you're like, well, we're not really sure exactly all to make of it. But when I read that paper that you wrote, I just think, especially when you think about the leniency design, I just think these kids probably didn't need to go to prison.

Anna Aizer:

Oh yeah.

Scott Cunningham:

Honestly, what else are you going to say? They end up committing more crimes. And they are not going back to school. How was this the policy goal? What was it like writing that paper when you started to realize what was going on?

Anna Aizer:

Again, when I worked in this Alternative to Incarceration program we had kids come into the program who had spent some time in jail. And we had kids who had spent very little time, maybe just a night. The kids who had spent even just three weeks in jail, they always did worse in the program. Always. It was a known fact. The program knew it. And the question was, well, are these kids somehow different? There was a reason why they were in jail and these other kids weren't. Is that why they do worse in the program? Maybe they're in jail because their family didn't show up for them in court. They couldn't make bail.

Anna Aizer:

Or was it something about spending three weeks in jail that just made it impossible for them to complete the program? This was a big question that was on everybody's mind. We talked about this quite a bit at the program, and we didn't know the answer. When I finally figured out how to do it, working with Joe, I wanted to know the answer to a question that I had been thinking about for over a decade.

Scott Cunningham:

Gosh. Were you emotionally upset when you started to see coefficients get really big?

Anna Aizer:

It really was not surprising. It really wasn't, because these are kids who are only marginally attached to school. These are not the kids who were going to school, doing well in school. These are kids who were not really that attached to school for whatever reason. So you take them out even for a month, they're not going to go back. I mean, it's obvious. We saw that in the program. What they ended up doing was moving a lot of kids from school to GED because they had not been involved in school, they were not involved in school. It just was much more likely that they would be able to complete a GED than actually go back to high school and finish.

Scott Cunningham:

Your paper, it like hit home for personal reasons. We had an event happen. I wrote a professor. I was like, this thing had happened. Anna and Joe find this result. I feel hopeless. There's this kid in town and I raised money for him. Basically, I was like, you just got to do everything in your power to not let them spend an extra minute in jail. And all this scared straight stuff. Parents get into it, too. They're exhausted. They're like, "Well, he's got to learn his lesson." Nobody learns a damn thing in jail. They don't learn a lesson. Because you're just so hopeless. You start grasping at straws. And people will tell you that might happen.

Scott Cunningham:

I just keep thinking to myself, look, just get him out of jail. Whatever the folklore is, let the folklore about how to help a kid happen outside of jail. Just get him out of jail and then just let the next thing. But the thing is, they need so much help. These kids that end up getting tangled up with... They do these petty larceny things. They're high on Xanax and they do these petty larceny things. And it just starts adding up. You get them out and you just realize, you're like, oh, okay. Now where's the massive infrastructure to help them? And you're like, there's not one. So then they just keep getting arrested and they keep getting arrested. Then you're going, well, how many lottery tickets is the optimal number of lottery tickets to always be buying so that you're diversifying, so that one time maybe it clicks? And you're just like, I don't have the budget constraint for it.

Anna Aizer:

Yep.

Scott Cunningham:

I find it hard to be hopeful sometimes when you work on these projects. I think that's part of it. When you work on projects around violence and kids and jail, it can, it can make you feel hopeless. I, even with your paper, just feel like... I'm like, okay, the goal needs to be to avoid this. But then you just think, but nobody's listening to an economist.

Anna Aizer:

Well, a couple things. The rate of juvenile detention has been falling pretty steadily. The trends look very different from adult incarceration and detention, which have only started to fall more recently. Juvenile detention incarceration has been falling. Actually, I was speaking with some policy makers who said that a 2013 National Academy Of Sciences report on juvenile detention was really very impactful, and that it made very clear that detaining and incarcerating youth was a terrible idea. So lots of things have changed in response. The federal policy in this space is to do what everything can be done to reduce the number of kids that are detained and incarcerated.

Anna Aizer:

Now, most of these kids are being detained and incarcerated in local and state jails and prisons. Federal government isn't actually jailing people, so their policy levers are more limited. But policy makers, at least at the federal level and increasingly at the state and local level, do understand that incarcerating youth is a bad idea. And rates have been falling. So that's the good news.

Scott Cunningham:

Right. Right. One of the things in this podcast series I've been gradually beginning to focus on is how so much of changing policy from the perspective of the individual scientist is the long game. You are doing things, and just almost knowing that this is a part of a larger process that takes a long time, and the work matters. It matters. It's important to tell the truth and do good work and do your best. Even to get it published in the top journal so that people take it really seriously, too.

Scott Cunningham:

It is so nice to talk. I really mean it. I've felt just such a strong inspiration and things that I've learned from you and how you do ask questions and how you answer them. I watch you get administrative data. That was the thing with that Joe Doyle paper, I watched you get administrative data. I think, oh, I could get administrative. It's really been for me personally, just looking, I have watched you be an economist and just use it to navigate a little bit about, okay, Anna's doing this and it's possible to do this.

Anna Aizer:

I got to give a shout out to Joe Doyle, because he was the one that was able to access that Chicago data.

Scott Cunningham:

Golly. I mean, there's all that linking. It seems like it's an early linking paper even.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Shout out to Joe more generally. He was a great co-author on that project.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Anna Aizer:

Yeah. Thank you, Scott. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Scott Cunningham:

Yeah. Okay. Bye, bye.

Anna Aizer:

Bye, bye.

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S1E25: Interview with Anna Aizer, Brown, Editor of Journal of Human Resources 01:16:56 Share

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S1E25: Interview with Anna Aizer, Brown, Editor of Journal of Human Resources