Law Commons^™

Assessing Post-Ada Employment: Some Econometric Evidence And Policy Considerationsjels, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

This article explores the relationship between the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the relative labor market outcomes for people with disabilities. Using individual-level longitudinal data from 1981 to 1996 derived from the previously unexploited Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we examine the possible effect of the ADA on (1) annual weeks worked; (2) annual earnings; and (3) hourly wages for a sample of 7,120 unique male household heads between the ages of 21 and 65, as well as for a subset of 1,437 individuals appearing every year from 1981 to 1996. Our analysis of the larger sample suggests …

Assessing Post-Ada Employment: Some Econometric Evidence And Policy Considerations, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

In this article, we offer innovative analysis and additional evidence on the relationship between the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) and the relative labor market outcomes for people with disabilities, the very class protected by its landmark provisions. Using individual-level longitudinal data from 1981 to 1996 derived from the previously unexploited Panel Study of Income Dynamics (“PSID”), we examine the possible effect of the ADA on (1) annual weeks worked; (2) annual earnings; and (3) hourly wages for a sample of 7120 unique male household heads between the ages of 21 and 65 as well as a subset of 1147 …

Testimony In Support Of Connecticut Senate Bill 1035 And House Bill 6425, Abolishing The Death Penalty (2011), John J. Donohue

John Donohue

In 1975, Isaac Ehrlich launched the modern econometric evaluation of the impact of the death penalty on the prevalence of murder with a controversial paper that concluded that each execution would lead to eight fewer homicides (Ehrlich 1975). A year later, the Supreme Court cited Ehrlich’s work in issuing an opinion ending the execution moratorium that had started with the 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia. Today it is widely recognized that Ehrlich's national time-series methodology is too unreliable to be published in any economics journal.

Over the last few years, a number of highly technical papers have purported to …

Better Laws Might Have Helped In Tucson, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

In an ideal world, stable, cautious law-abiding citizens would have access to guns and others would not. We would like wise regulation and prudent personal decisions about carrying and using guns. Deciding on the elements of wise laws and consumer decisions requires extensive data analysis beyond any single episode, like the horrific killings in Tucson. But this tragedy highlights some relevant issues.

The Legal Response To Discrimination: Does Law Matter?, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

The topic of the legal response to discrimination is broad and growing. It includes everything from hate crime legislation and governmental prohibition of discrimination in the purchase of housing, cars, and loans, to restrictions on discrimination in the provision of government services and benefits as well as in employment.1 In the latter category alone, the body of law banning discrimination in the workplace has both deepened as the original prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" (Section 703(a)(1) of Tide VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) have been interpreted to prohibit …

Controlling Crime: Strategies And Tradeoffs, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

The United States stands out among developed nations for both its extremely punitive illegal drug policy and the high percentages of its population that have consumed banned substances—particularly marijuana and cocaine. The war against the millions of Americans who use and sell these drugs has cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year and contributed substantially to America’s globally unmatched incarceration rate (Walmsley 2009). Yet it has failed to displace America from among the world leaders in use rates for illegal drugs, even if escalating punitiveness may have contributed to declines in US drug consumption from its peaks in the late …

The Impact Of Right-To-Carry Laws And The Nrc Report: Lessons For The Empirical Evaluation Of Law And Policy, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

For over a decade, there has been a spirited academic debate over the impact on crime of laws that grant citizens the presumptive right to carry concealed handguns in public— so-called right-to-carry (RTC) laws. In 2005, the National Research Council (NRC) offered a critical evaluation of the ‘‘more guns, less crime’’ hypothesis using county-level crime data for the period 1977–2000. Seventeen of the eighteen NRC panel members essentially concluded that the existing research was inadequate to conclude that RTC laws increased or decreased crime. The final member of the panel, though, concluded that the NRC_s panel data regressions supported the …