This dissertation explores topics in applied microeconomics with a particular focus on policy issues. The first chapter explores racial bias in the referral patterns of emergency department providers to child protective services. Using clustering techniques and regression analysis, I estimate the relationship between the probability of being placed with CPS on the same day as an ED visit and a child's race. Then, comparing children with similar medical histories and diagnoses, I find that race is not a significant predictor of referral, except in cases where children present with mild illnesses, offering ED providers greater discretion over the referral decision. The second chapter studies the impact of the urban renewal program, which demolished and rebuilt dilapidated neighborhoods in the 1950s and 1960s. In this chapter, I estimate the effects of urban renewal projects in Chicago on neighborhood demographic composition. Using a difference-in-differences design to compare project census tracts to census tracts considered as project sites, I find an increase in the share of the population with a college degree in treated tracts. Looking for heterogeneous treatment effects, I find a significant negative impact on the Black population for early projects in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Chapter 3, coauthored with Clare Halloran, Rebecca Jack, and Emily Oster, uses state test score data to analyze patterns of test score recovery after COVID-19. On average, we find that 20\% of test score losses are recovered in English language arts (ELA) by 2022, compared to 37\% in math. These recovery rates do not significantly vary across demographic characteristics, baseline achievement rates, in-person schooling rates in the pandemic school year, or category-based measures of recovery funding allocations. We observe large state-level variation in recovery rates in ELA -- from full recovery to further losses. This evidence suggests state-level factors play an important role in students' academic recovery, but we are unable to isolate particular state factors. Future work should focus on this variation to facilitate a broader recovery effort.
