working papers

• Financial Incentives and Public Safety: The Role of Blood Plasma Donation Centers in Crime Reduction [August 2025], joint with Samuel Kang and Mariyana Zapryanova [presentation mode]


• Community Schools and Student Behavioral Outcomes: Evidence From New York City [August 2025], joint with Parunjodhi Munisamy and Mariyana Zapryanova [submitted]


• Beyond Hot Spots: Enhancing Police Effectiveness by Incorporating a Spatial Network Approach [June 2025], joint with Corrado Giulietti and Yves Zenou [under review]


• Dissecting Demand-Side Welfare Manipulation [March 2025], joint with Jaime Millán-Quijano [presentation mode]


• On the Marriage Wage Premium [February 2025], joint with Arnau Valladares-Esteban [presentation mode]


• The Reluctant Bureaucrat: Decision-Making and Justification in Shifting Legal Contexts [September 2024], joint with Isaac Dalke [presentation mode]


• Kicking You When You're Already Down: The Multipronged Impact of Austerity on Crime [April 2024], joint with Corrado Giulietti [presentation mode]


• Can't see the Forest for the logs: On the Perils of using Difference-in-Differences with a log-Dependent Variable [February 2024]


• Do Homebuyers Value Energy Efficiency? Evidence From an Information Shock [January 2024], joint with Arpita Ghosh and Jaime Millán-Quijano [presentation mode]


• Do Employers Positively Discriminate Married Workers? [January 2023], joint with Arnau Valladares-Esteban [presentation mode]


• Racial Sentencing Disparities and Differential Progression Through the Criminal Justice System: Evidence From Linked Federal and State Court Data [April 2022] [foundation-level reworking]

selected active projects

• Multi-stage Discrimination, joint with Bobby Pakzad-Hurson and Matthew Pecenco [mid-way]


• House Prices and Homicides, joint with Corrado Giulietti [mid-way]


• An Alternative Approach to Measuring Assortative Matching, sole-authored [mid-way]


• The Changing Relationship Between Crime and Deprivation, sole-authored [mid-way]


• Measuring The Social Costs of Homicides Using Subjective and Objective Measures, joint with Arpita Ghosh and Corrado Giulietti [mid-way]

older working papers

• The Result of 11+ Selection: An Investigation into Opportunities and Outcomes for Pupils in Selective LEAs [April 2007], joint with Adele Atkinson and Paul Gregg. A slightly older version is available as CMPO Working Paper 06/150 {to rise again}

Revise & Resubmit

• Do Remote Workers Deter Neighborhood Crime? Evidence from the Rise of Working from Home [November 2023], joint with Jesse Matheson, James Rockey, and Argyris Sakalis [R&R, Review of Economic Studies]
  media: [NYT] [guardian]


• More Powerful Cluster Randomized Control Trials [April 2024], joint with Marcos Vera-Hernández [R&R, Economic Development and Cultural Change]
  Companion R package for the project: Optimal.sample

Journal Articles

• Going Beyond Simple Sample Size Calculations: a Practitioner's Guide [July 2025], joint with Marcos Vera-Hernández
  Fiscal Studies [forthcoming]


• How do Parole Boards Respond to Large, Societal Shocks? Evidence from the 9-11 Terrorist Attacks [2024], joint with Kegon Teng Kok Tan and Mariyana Zapryanova
  Journal of Public Economics vol. 238, (2024)


• Contagious Animosity in the Field: Evidence from the Federal Criminal Justice System [2021] , joint with Imran Rasul
  Journal of Labor Economics vol. 39, 739-85, (2021)


• Racial and Ethnic Sentencing Differentials in the Federal Criminal Justice System [2018], joint with Imran Rasul
  AEA Papers and Proceedings vol. 108, 241-245 (2018)


• Crime and the Depenalization of Cannabis: Evidence from a Policing Experiment [2014], joint with Jérôme Adda and Imran Rasul
  Journal of Political Economy vol. 122(5), 1130-1202 (2014)
  View a short film made about the paper


• Modelling the Effect of Pupil Mobility on School Differences in Educational Achievement, joint with Simon Burgess and Harvey Goldstein
  Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, vol. 127(4), 941-954 (2007)


• Girls Rock, Boys Roll: An Analysis of the Age 14-16 Gender Gap in English Schools, joint with Simon Burgess, Carol Propper, and Deborah Wilson,
  Scottish Journal of Political Economy, vol. 51(2), 209-229 (2004)

Book Chapters

• The Impact of School Choice on Sorting by Ability and Socio-Economic Factors in English Secondary Education, joint with Simon Burgess, Carol Propper and Deborah Wilson
  Schools and the Equal Opportunity Problem, MIT Press (2007). ISBN-13: 978-0-262-23257-9

/now

Reading: just started Jens Ludwig's new book Unforgiving Places. Not far in just yet, but so far it's great! I've never liked the Becker model for thinking about violent crime, so he's preaching to the choir there.
Riding: still thinking of switching out the drop bars for a flat setup on my gravel bar, still not done it.
Doing: I seem to be walking the dogs a lot right now
Cooking: still loving Madhur Jaffrey
Listening to [music-wise]: on the hunt for good new music
Listening to [podcast-wise]: back with Cal Newport deep questions after a hiatus

contact

email: brendon dot mcconnell at city dot ac dot uk