American Economic Review: Insights
ISSN 2640-205X (Print) | ISSN 2640-2068 (Online)
The Impact of Criminal Financial Sanctions: A Multistate Analysis of Survey and Administrative Data
American Economic Review: Insights
vol. 6,
no. 4, December 2024
(pp. 490–508)
Abstract
We estimate the impact of financial sanctions in the US 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.Citation
Finlay, Keith, Matthew Gross, Carl Lieberman, Elizabeth Luh, and Michael Mueller-Smith. 2024. "The Impact of Criminal Financial Sanctions: A Multistate Analysis of Survey and Administrative Data." American Economic Review: Insights, 6 (4): 490–508. DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20230413Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- G51 Household Finance: Household Saving, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
- H76 State and Local Government: Other Expenditure Categories
- J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
- K14 Criminal Law
- K41 Litigation Process
- K42 Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law