Emily Owens
Assistant Professor
2009
PAMWeb Bio Page
Current Activities
Current Research Activities
Emily G. Owens is currently working on a number of projects using a unique set of Maryland criminal justice records. She is studying how the imposition of sentencing guidelines affect judicial discretion making by examining how judges sentence individuals when guidelines recommendations are calculated in different ways. Research on the economics of crime includes examining the impact of sentence length on criminal recidivism using prospect theory, as opposed to conventional expected utility theory, to measure how severe convicted individuals perceive their punishment to be. She is also investigating the role of financial incentives in the jury deliberation process, and how much crime victims are "willing to pay" for police involvement.
In addition to her work on the criminal justice system, Dr. Owens is conducting research on how changes in the size and composition of the immigrant population in the United States is related to informal economic activity, and how public transportation affects alcohol consumption and drunk driving.
Biography
Biographical Statement
Emily G. Owens is an assistant professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management. She joined the Cornell faculty in 2007 after receiving her Ph.D. in economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her primary area of research focuses on government regulation of criminal activity. This includes studying how government policies affect the prevalence of criminal activity as well as the structure of criminal justice systems. She is also a research fellow at the Jacob France Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
Education
B.A. 2002 - Brown University, Applied Math and Economics
Ph.D. 2007 - University of Maryland, Economics
Keywords
Applied Economics, Criminal Justice, Criminal Statistics
Courses, Websites, Pubs
Related Websites
http://www.human.cornell.edu/che/PAM/People/emily_owens.cfm
Selected Publications
Evans, W. N. and Owens, E. G. (2007). “COPS and Crime” Journal of Public Economics 91(2): 181-201. [abstract]
Owens, E. G. (2009) “More Time, Less Crime? Estimating the Incapacitative Effects of Sentence Enhancements” Journal of Law and Economics. forthcoming August 2009.