Austin L. Wright

TL;DR: Novel results on the local impact of the 2020 CARES Act suggest stimulus transfers that addressed economic dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased social distancing.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that the proportion of people who stay at home after lockdown policies go into effect is significantly lower in counties with a high concentration of climate change skeptics, suggesting public health interventions and messaging about risks associated with COVID-19 that take into account local attitudes towards science may be more effective.

TL;DR: This paper found that mask use is robustly correlated with partisanship, and the impact of partisanship on mask use was not offset by local policy interventions, and that partisanship was the single most important predictor of mask use, not COVID-19 severity or local policies.

TL;DR: The authors study insurgent violence during elections using newly declassified microdata on the conflict in Afghanistan and find that violence depresses voting, which suggests insurgents try to depress turnout while avoiding backlash from harming civilians.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study the impact of a border wall project on smuggling in Israel and find that border fortification may have uneven distributional consequences, creating unintended winners and losers.