Todd Jones

Criminal activity is seasonal, peaking in the summer and declining through the winter. We provide the first evidence that arrests of children and reported crimes involving children follow a different pattern: peaking during the school year and declining in the summer. We use a regression discontinuity design surrounding the exact start and end dates of the school year to show that this pattern is caused by school: children aged 10-17 are roughly 50% more likely to be involved in a reported crime during the beginning of the school year relative to the weeks before school begins. This sharp increase is driven by student-on-student crimes occurring in school and during school hours. We use the timing of these patterns and a seasonal adjustment to argue that school increases reported crime rates (and arrests) involving 10-17-year-old offenders by 47% (41%) annually relative to a counterfactual where crime rates follow typical seasonal patterns. School exacerbates preexisting sex-based and race-based inequality in reported crime and arrest rates, increasing both the Black-white and male-female gap in reported juvenile crime and arrest rates by more than 40%.

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We demonstrate how mothers, fathers, and 15–17-year-old students alter their schedules around the K-12 academic year. Using regression discontinuity (RDD) methods, combined with dates on school year start and end dates by locality, we document several notable results. First, mothers are substantially more affected by the school year than are fathers. When school is in session, mothers sleep less, spend more time caring for family members and driving them around, and spend less time on eating, free time and exercise. Fathers see changes that are generally similar in sign but smaller in magnitude compared to mothers. 15–17-year-olds naturally reduce time spent in educational pursuits when school is out (a decrease of about 5.5 hours per day on weekdays), and most of that time is substituted toward free time (an additional 2+ hours per day) and sleep (1+ hours per day). Our results provide a holistic picture of how families build their days around the K-12 school calendar and have implications for policies targeted toward women’s and teenage children’s health and well-being.

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We use roster data of 96 top U.S. economics departments to document the academic origins of their tenure-track faculty. Academic origins may have implications for how undergraduate (B.A.) and doctoral (Ph.D.) students are trained and placed, as well as the type of research produced. We find that faculty educated at top-ranked Ph.D. universities are overrepresented; e.g., over half of our sample attended a top 15 university, and over a third attended a top six university. We find similar, but less pronounced, patterns for B.A. origins; e.g., over a third of those with a U.S. B.A. attended a top 15 university.

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