Dear RSF:
Please join us next Wednesday, March 5th at 11 in the library and on Zoom for a presentation by Visiting Scholar Morgan C. Williams, Jr. entitled “Race, Place and Policing.”
Williams is Assistant Professor of Economics at Barnard College, where he has been since 2021. He also holds positions as an invited researcher at Abdul Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and as an affiliate at Columbia University’s Population Research Center (CPRC). Williams has a PhD in Economics from the City University of New York Graduate Center, an MPH in Public Health from Columbia University and a BA from Morehouse College.
His primary fields of focus are the economics of crime and the economics of race, with secondary foci on health and labor economics. Williams is also a previous recipient of the New York University Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Predoctoral Fellowship, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Predoctoral Fellowship, and a U.S. Fulbright Scholar Award.
At RSF Williams is examining how municipal residency requirements, which mandate that public sector employees such as law enforcement officers live within the agency’s city limits, affect racial disparities in public safety and policing outcomes. Using novel historical and administrative data, Williams explores the extent to which benefits accrued from these policies, such as improved community relations, may come at the cost of constrained officer recruitment pools and potentially lower quality policing.