Title: Republican Support and Economic Hardship: The Enduring Effects of the Opioid Epidemic

Abstract: In this paper, we establish a causal connection between two of the most salient social developments in the United States over the past decades: the opioid epidemic and the political realignment between the Republican and Democratic parties. Drawing on unsealed records from litigation against Purdue Pharma, we uncover rich geographic variation in the marketing of prescription opioids that serves as a quasi-exogenous source of exposure to the epidemic. We use this variation to document significant increases in drug-related mortality and greater reliance on public transfer programs. This induced economic hardship led to substantial changes in the political landscape of the communities most affected by the opioid epidemic. We estimate that from the mid-2000s to 2022, exposure to the opioid epidemic continuously increased the Republican vote share in House, presidential, and gubernatorial elections. By the 2022 House elections, a one-standard-deviation increase in our measure of exposure led to a 4.5 percentage point increase in the Republican vote share. From 2012 until 2022, this increase in the House vote share translated into Republicans winning additional seats.

Title: Optimal policy design for teacher recruitment

Abstract: This paper studies the design of higher education policies targeted at improving teacher recruitment. I leverage the introduction of a policy in Chile that aimed to raise teacher quality by crowding-in higher performing students into Education programs, while crowding-out the lower-performing ones. Exploiting the sharp assignment rule I estimate that, at the threshold, enrollment of high performing students at teacher colleges increased by 42%, with low-income students coming disproportionately from non-enrollment. The policy generated a positive composition effect of 0.25SD in test scores, which lead to an increase in 0.11SD in Teacher Value Added and 0.12SD in Teaching Skills. I develop a demand and supply model of the higher education market. In doing so, I present a novel method for solving discrete-continuous games in large markets. Simulation of counterfactual policies lead to increases of up to 6.6% in the test scores of students enrolled at teacher colleges, and up to 27% in Teacher Value Added. A policy targeted at low-income students yields further gains in Teacher Value Added at no additional cost.

Title: Retirement Reference Points and the Dynamics of Adjustment to Pension Reform

Abstract: We study how individual retirement behavior responds over time to pension reform, exploiting a cohort-based increase in the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) and full-population administrative data from the Netherlands. We present two pieces of evidence of gradual adjustments in the short-run. First, excess retirements at the new NRA accumulate progressively over time. Second, many workers continue to retire at the old NRA in the years immediately following the reform. Within three years, however, retirement behavior fully shifts towards the new NRA. We interpret these findings through a model of reference-dependent retirement behavior, where workers gradually adopt the new NRA as a reference point. Overall, our results suggest that while retirement behavior is sticky in the short-run, the large long-run impact of pension reforms found in prior studies emerges relatively quickly.