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  5. The Impact of Criminal Financial Sanctions: A Multi-State Analysis of Survey and Administrative Data

American Economic Review: Insights

ISSN 2640-205X (Print) | ISSN 2640-2068 (Online)

The Impact of Criminal Financial Sanctions: A Multi-State Analysis of Survey and Administrative Data

  • Keith Finlay
  • Matthew Gross
  • Carl Lieberman
  • Elizabeth Luh
  • Michael Mueller-Smith
American Economic Review: Insights (Forthcoming)

Abstract

We estimate the impact of financial sanctions in the U.S. criminal justice system leveraging nine natural experiments in a regression discontinuity design framework across a diverse range of enforcement levels ($17–$6,000) and institutional environments. We leverage survey and administrative data to consider a variety of short and long-term outcomes including employment, recidivism, household expenditures, and other self-reported measures of well-being. We find robust evidence of precise null effects, including ruling out long-run impacts larger than -$391–$142 in annual earnings and -0.001–0.01 in annual convictions, with no corresponding payment increases despite salient and heterogeneous enforcement mechanisms.

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