Jennifer Doleac is an American
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
and associate professor at
Texas A&M
Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...
. She also directs the Justice Tech Lab, hosts the Probable Causation podcast, is a research affiliate of the
University of Chicago Crime Lab, and serves on the board of editors of he Journal of Economic Literature. In October 2022,
Vox named her to their "Future Perfect 50," a list of "scientists, thinkers, scholars, writers, and activists building a more perfect future," writing, "Doleac looks at criminal justice policy through the lens of causal factors on a society-wide level."
Education and career
Doleac received her
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in Economics and Mathematics from
Williams College
Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...
in 2003. She completed her PhD in economics from
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
in 2012 and was on the faculty of the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy from 2012 to 2018. She was a visiting fellow at the
Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...
in 2015-2016 and then a Nonresident Fellow in Economic Studies. She moved to Texas A&M Department of Economics as an associate professor with
tenure
Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...
in 2018. In 2021, Texas A&M named her one of 20 Presidential Impact Fellows at that university.
Career
Doleac's research focuses on the economics of crime and discrimination, with particular interests in prisoner reentry and on policies that affect public safety. In work receiving media attention, she has studied the impact of policies banning employers from asking about job applicants' prior criminal records, the impact of daylight saving time on crime, and the impact of prosecuting non-violent misdemeanor offenses.
Research on ban-the-box initiatives
Doleac has written extensively prisoner reentry. Prisoner reentry is a considerable challenge in the United States due to the ubiquity of background checks and the myriad of obstacles prisoners face reentering the labor force upon release. An increasingly popular policy at the federal, state and municipality level is the "
ban the box Ban the Box is the name of an American campaign by advocates for ex-offenders aimed at removing the check box that asks if applicants have a criminal record from hiring applications. Its purpose is to enable ex-offenders to display their qualificat ...
" initiative. Employers often will ask applicants for jobs if they have any prior arrests or convictions by checking Yes or No on a "box". The
ban the box Ban the Box is the name of an American campaign by advocates for ex-offenders aimed at removing the check box that asks if applicants have a criminal record from hiring applications. Its purpose is to enable ex-offenders to display their qualificat ...
initiative are laws, oftentimes at the city level, banning employers' right to ask this information of applicants during the earliest stages of the application process. In her most-cited publication, a 2018 article published in the Journal of Labor Economics, Doleac and
Benjamin Hansen from the University of Oregon found that these laws had
unintended consequences
In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by Ameri ...
on the hiring of low skill minorities. The authors found that ban the box policies lowered the chances of employment by 5 percent for young, low-skilled black men and almost 3 percent for young, low-skilled Hispanic men. The authors argue that this effect was caused by rampant
statistical discrimination in labor markets. Without information on a candidate's criminal history, employers make extreme racially biased assumptions that the applicant is similar to his or her demographic. Thus seeing a black applicant, even one without a criminal history, the firm "fills in" the missing information by assuming he or she is like the group average, and thus is more likely to believe the applicant has a criminal history, even when they do not.
Selected research publications
* Doleac, Jennifer L., and Benjamin Hansen. "The unintended consequences of “ban the box”: Statistical discrimination and employment outcomes when criminal histories are hidden." Journal of Labor Economics 38, no. 2 (2020): 321-374.
* Doleac, Jennifer L., and Luke CD Stein. "The visible hand: Race and online market outcomes." The Economic Journal 123, no. 572 (2013): F469-F492.
* Doleac, Jennifer L., and Nicholas J. Sanders. "Under the cover of darkness: How ambient light influences criminal activity." Review of Economics and Statistics 97, no. 5 (2015): 1093-1103.
* Doleac, Jennifer L. "The effects of DNA databases on crime." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 9, no. 1 (2017): 165-201.
* Doleac, Jennifer L., and Anita Mukherjee. "The effects of naloxone access laws on opioid abuse, mortality, and crime." The Journal of Law and Economics 65, no. 2 (2022): 211-238.
Public Impact
In addition to conducting her own research, Doleac synthesizes and critiques other studies of crime and criminology, highlighting results supported by solid empirical work and by
natural experiments that support causal relationships.
She has testified about the impact of Ban-the-box policies on hiring before the
U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and about effective crime-reduction policies before the
New Mexico Legislature
The New Mexico Legislature ( es, Legislatura de Nuevo México) is the legislative branch of the state government of New Mexico. It is a bicameral body made up of the New Mexico House of Representatives and the New Mexico Senate.
History
The Ne ...
.
Podcast
Doleac hosts the Probable Causation podcast focusing on law, economics and crime.
''Probable Causation podcast''
Harm reduction
In 2018, Doleac, then a
Brookings expert, released a study under Brookings along with Anita Mukherjee and Molly Schnell which claimed that
harm reduction
Harm reduction, or harm minimization, refers to a range of public health policies designed to lessen the negative social and/or physical consequences associated with various human behaviors, both legal and illegal. Harm reduction is used to de ...
(prescribing heroin for opioid addiction) does not work. Doleac and her co-authors claimed that
syringe exchange programs and naloxone distribution would worsen addiction. However, the claims were disputed by public health officials who argued that the results of Doleac's finding go against previous research on harm reduction. Doleac and her co-authors, it was claimed, only focused on economic literature on harm reduction and ignored public health research. In response to the criticism, Doleac released a statement through Brookings where she said the public health discipline was filled with researchers who "collectively have so little understanding of rigorous research methods". In response to Doleac's comments, Brookings released a statement where the institute said that it "does not take positions on issues, nor does
tendorse Doleac's response to the criticism and feedback she received".
External links
Economist Jennifer Doleac of Texas A&M University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about her research on crime, police, and the unexpected consequences of the criminal justice system.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Doleac, Jennifer
21st-century American economists
Williams College alumni
Stanford University alumni
Texas A&M University faculty
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
American women economists
21st-century American women