Abstract

This dissertation is made up of three chapters, each concerning a different topic under the umbrella of the economics of criminal justice. In the first, "Consumer Choice in Illinois Prison Commissaries," I estimate the demand system that underlies prisoners' consumption decisions in the commissary stores that operate inside Illinois state prisons in order to find the counterfactual set of per-good markups that maximizes prisoner welfare subject to revenue neutrality and other alternative constraints. The second chapter, "Tenure Effects in Investigatory Stops," is joint work with Andrew Jordan (the details of my contributions are discussed in the introduction to the chapter). We use data from Chicago to study how investigatory search and hit rates change with officer tenure. As our findings are inconsistent with both simple screening models and observed variation across other officer characteristics, we propose a model that explains this pattern by allowing officers to make dynamic investments in search skill. In the third chapter, "How (Much) Do Financial Repercussions Affect Pretrial Behavior?" I exploit a policy change that affected the size of refunds expected by defendants in Chicago who fulfilled the terms of their bail agreements in order to examine how the cash bail amounts affect defendants' likelihoods of committing bail violations.

Committee Chair

Andrew Jordan

Committee Members

Bradley Larsen; Derek Neal; George-Levi Gayle; Ismael Mourifié

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Economics

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

4-21-2026

Language

English (en)

Author's ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4988-3089

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Available for download on Tuesday, April 13, 2027

Included in

Economics Commons

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