CESR Events

Tuesday, June 29
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Abstract: Permanent supportive housing (PSH), which combines subsidized affordable housing with case management and social services, represents an increasingly popular approach to responding to chronic homelessness. However, attempts to develop new PSH facilities often encounter local resistance based on concerns that such facilities threaten public safety to nearby residents. This preregistered study provides new evidence on whether PSH facilities causally affect crime in proximate areas, using the rapid expansion of PSH facilities in Los Angeles County as a natural experiment. Combining administrative crime data from 2010 to 2023 with housing data from state and local government sources, we employ a staggered difference-in-differences design to compare crime changes in the area surrounding newly opened PSH facilities to contemporaneous changes in areas where PSH facilities will open in the future. Results show precise null effects of PSH openings on total crime, violence, and property crime, in general ruling out crime increases over 6 percent. While we can conclude that opening supportive housing facilities does not lead to a measurable local increase in property or violent crime, we cannot rule out effects of PSH openings on local disorder, an important driver of perceptions of safety.

Bio: Rosanna Smart is a senior economist at RAND, codirector of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, codirector of the RAND Gun Policy in America initiative, and professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. Her research focuses on risky behaviors, illegal markets, drug policy, and the determinants of gun violence. Within her drug policy research, she currently leads projects evaluating the implications of evolving cannabis market dynamics, assessing the consequences of supply shocks to psychiatric medications, and assessing the effects of drug paraphernalia decriminalization on crime and criminal justice outcomes. Her other strand of research focuses on informing effective gun policy in the United States, evaluating the differential effects of gun policy across different populations and communities and identifying interventions and policies that can reduce gun violence. Her research has been published in outlets such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, American Journal of Public Health, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Monday, July 13
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Monday, July 20
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Monday, July 27
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Thursday, June 4
9am – 10am Pacific Time
Zoom (See email for Zoom link)

Abstract: Socioeconomic outcomes exhibit substantial heterogeneity across individuals. Personality traits—relatively stable patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving—may shape human capital accumulation and economic behavior, thereby contributing to differences in socioeconomic outcomes. However, estimating their causal effects is challenging, as early-life environments may both shape personality and independently influence later outcomes. This interdependence makes it difficult to isolate causal effects using conventional observational approaches. In this paper, we exploit random within-family genetic variation as a source of exogenous variation to study the causal relationship between personality traits and socioeconomic outcomes. A recent genome-wide association study identified genetic markers associated with the Big Five personality traits (Schwaba et al., 2025). We construct polygenic indices (PGIs) for participants of the Dutch Lifelines Biobank, whose administrative tax records allow us to measure a rich set of socioeconomic outcomes. A key challenge is that these PGIs may affect outcomes through channels other than personality, such as education and cognitive ability. To address this concern, we combine two complementary approaches: controlling for PGIs associated with alternative pathways and implementing a GWAS-by-subtraction strategy. Our results advance our understanding of the causal relationship between personality traits and socioeconomic outcomes.

Bio: Leandro Carvalho is an Associate Research Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California’s Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). His research spans social genomics, behavioral economics, and development economics. In social genomics, he studies how socioeconomic, behavioral, and health outcomes are causally shaped by the interplay between genetics and environment. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and others. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University and is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—where, despite extensive research, he has found no credible evidence that genetics determines soccer ability.

Tuesday, May 12
12pm – 1pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Wednesday, May 27
11am – 12pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom

Monday, June 8
11am – 12pm PT
VPD 203 and Zoom