We examine whether same-sex marriage legalization announcements impact the occurrence of LGBT hate-crimes. We exploit variation in the timing of same-sex marriage legalization announcements across states, using a difference-in-differences design. We find that a same-sex marriage legalization announcement leads to a reduction in the LGBT hate-crime rate of 0.111 per 100,000 people from a base of 0.3. This result is mostly driven by reductions in violent hate-crimes. There is also evidence of a reduction in property hate-crimes. Additional analyses indicate that the effect is stronger in counties with a large share of likely perpetrators. Our results show suggestive evidence that same-sex marriage bans have the opposite effect on the LGBT hate-crime rate. The results demonstrate that salient LGBT-specific policy announcements are effective at reducing hate-crimes based on sexual orientation.

In this paper we investigate whether a corner assignment itself can change the odds of wins and losses. Corner assignment is an indication of which fighter the promotion wants to present as the favorite to win. The favorites spend time with other favorites and the underdogs spend time with other underdogs, which could further exacerbate the psychological impact of expecting to win/lose. We gather information on fight statistics, bets, and fight purses for more than 4,000 fights that took place as part of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) between 1993 and 2020. By restricting to fights expected a priori to be tossups, we find that fighters win at a higher rate when their promotion deems them to be the favorite even when the market and their prior performance indicates that they should be the "underdog."

Recreational cannabis has been legalized in several states, which could increase demand for travel to these locations. I study the impact that recreational marijuana legalization has on airline travel. Using origin to destination flight data and marijuana legalization and availability dates, I find no evidence of an increase in airline travel as a result of marijuana legalization. The null results are robust to difference-in-differences models and synthetic control models. My initial estimates may be attenuated by business travelers, drivers, or enforcement of marijuana prohibition. I control for these circumstances and still find no effect.

In this paper, I ask if access to mental health care can reduce crimes. In particular, I study the effect of increasing access for those that already have private insurance by exploiting the state and time variation in the adoption of mental health parity man- dates. I find no evidence to suggest that even the most far-reaching of these mandates are effective at curbing crime. I also follow up on prior studies applying this legislation to determine the effect on suicide rates. I similarly find no change in suicide rates as a result of this legislation.