We estimate the causal impact of military conscription on long-term beliefs and personality traits. To address potential endogeneity concerns, we exploit the conscription lottery in Argentina. We combine administrative data from the conscription lottery with data from a survey we designed on beliefs and personality traits. We find that men who were conscripted are more likely to adopt a military mind-set and that the effect is long lasting. Given the many people who go through military conscription, our results are useful for understanding how personality traits and beliefs are formed for a very salient part of the world's population.

Can investing in failing schools help them improve?  This paper studies this question using a natural experiment based on a 2017 lawsuit settlement that allocated substantial resources to the lowest-performing schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).  Using a difference-in-differences design, I compare 50 secondary schools that received  $1,030 per student annually for three years to nearby public, noncharter schools that received no settlement funding. The intervention mandated hiring of additional staff members and allocating of funds for professional development, but allowed discretionary spending on initiatives for high-need students. I find that, in line with the intent of the settlement,  schools hired more personnel, including instructional staff such as teachers and counselors and support personnel such as paraprofessionals and school service staff. In terms of performance outcomes, relative to the unfunded district schools, settlement schools experienced substantial reductions in suspension rates. These reductions were particularly notable given that the settlement triggered demographic sorting, with the treated schools losing students overall and shifting toward higher concentrations of economically disadvantaged students and lower Black enrollment. A simple bounding exercise that accounts for demographic sorting indicates that the settlement had meaningful effects on suspension rates, suggesting real improvements on noncognitive dimensions of schooling. Survey evidence suggests that a key mechanism was improvements to school climate as reported by staff and students. 

Rising global temperatures pose critical threats to mental health, especially in developing countries with limited adaptive infrastructure. We investigate how temperature affects a spectrum of mental health outcomes in Mexico from 2008 to 2019, combining administrative records of emergency department (ED) visits, suicide and mortality data, and self-reported well-being measures. Our analysis exploits local variation in temperature using a high-dimensional fixed effects model that controls for municipality-level seasonality and state-year trends. We find that higher temperatures significantly increase ED visits for mental disorders and suicide rates. Women are more likely to seek mental health care through ED visits, while men face heightened risks of suicide and death. Older adults show vulnerability to heat-related suicide. We add to the studies that explain mechanisms: individuals reduce physical activity and shift toward sedentary indoor behaviors as temperatures rise, with no significant changes in sleep time. Self-reported well-being supports the findings with increased psychological distress, diminished autonomy, and overall life dissatisfaction. We document that mental health ED visits rise more sharply in municipalities without access to psychiatrists, highlighting the possibility of institutional gaps in adaptation. However, air conditioning and rurality do not significantly moderate these effects. Our results highlight how institutional adaptation (or the lack thereof) shapes population vulnerability to psychological stress caused by increased temperature in Mexico.

We study the effects of a major immigration reform on alleged and substantiated maltreatment of Hispanic children using administrative data from child protective services agencies. Secure Communities ties federal immigration enforcement to local law enforcement, effectively increasing the likelihood of deportation for undocumented immigrants who are arrested for a crime. We exploit the staggered rollout of Secure Communities across counties to estimate a dynamic treatment effect model. We find that Secure Communities implementation increased the number of Hispanic children per 1000 found to be victims of child maltreatment as well as the likelihood that maltreatment allegations for Hispanic children are substantiated, consistent with increased average severity of investigated cases.

The rise of AI-powered tools for mental health support has generated enthusiasm about their potential to expand access to mental health support at low cost. Yet important questions remain about effectiveness, user engagement, and whether such tools might exacerbate feelings of isolation or crowd out traditional forms of care. We evaluate the effects of an AI-powered digital mental health app in a randomized controlled trial among women experiencing at least some mild psychological distress in Mexico. Access to the app significantly improved mental health outcomes during the 8-week study period: it reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress; improved subjective well-being, feelings of isolation, and sleep quality; and increased the prevalence of healthful behaviors. In addition, treated respondents were more likely to seek traditional psychotherapy. Engagement with the app was initially high, though use declined over time. However, effects persisted, potentially consistent with "as-needed" use. Our findings suggest that scalable digital tools can improve mental health outcomes, benefiting both individuals with limited sources of support and those who already have access to other forms of care.

The majority of U.S. public school districts now offer school choice programs that allocate seats using a centralized algorithm but with voluntary participation. The optional nature of public school choice segments public education and raises critical questions: who chooses, who benefits, and what policy alternatives can produce better outcomes for children? This paper provides new evidence on these questions by studying the Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest opt-in system in the country. Analyzing two decades of lottery records, we find that students living closer to choice options are both more likely to participate and to experience larger achievement gains. The proximity-based treatment effect heterogeneity is not explained by other observable treatment effect heterogeneity, suggesting a potential role for unobserved demand-side factors. To assess the empirical relevance of this hypothesis, we rely on quasi-experimental variation in distance to schools due to large expansions in choice programming and lottery-based admission lotteries to estimate a generalized Roy model that links families' decisions to apply and enroll to achievement gains. Our estimates indicate that the families least likely to apply under the current system would realize the largest test score benefits if they participated. In other words, decentralized, opt-in systems not only segment public education markets based on student ability and socioeconomic status but also exacerbate existing inequalities in educational outcomes. Policy interventions such as targeted information interventions that cultivate broader participation or mandate participation as is done in cities such as New York can produce sizable reductions in inequality.