This dissertation consists of three chapters in applied microeconomics. The first two coverpolicy changes, one in the labor market and one in policing, while the third examines historical labor markets.

Right-to-Work (RTW) laws are a common state policy that outlaw union security agreements and thus decrease union funding. Previous estimates of RTW laws' influence on union density, wages, and employment have varied extremely widely. Using the early-to-mid 2010s implementation of RTW laws in five U.S. states, I estimate the short-run impacts of the policy on labor markets using a synthetic difference-in-differences estimation strategy. RTW laws lead to a 1 percentage point decrease in union membership overall and a 2 percentage point decrease in industries that are more highly unionized. They also contribute to a small but weakly significant increase in the employment to prime-age labor force ratio despite a decrease in people employed. This is due to a 0.9 percentage point decrease in the labor force participation rate that is concentrated among older individuals. RTW laws do not lead to a statistically significant change in workers wages on aggregate, but do lead to a 30.0% increase in the union non-union wage gap and a 5.7% decrease in wages for Black workers. RTW also appears to increase firm concentration and lower business dynamism as the number of firms, establishments, new business applications, and new firm formations all decrease at statistically significant levels. Together this provides evidence that RTW laws decrease union density but do not increase labor demand by attracting firms in the short-run. In response to RTW, unions may change their negotiating focus to prioritize wages while Black workers tend to be disproportionately negatively impacted by the weakening of unions.

In the wake of George Floyd's death and the ensuing protests throughout the country, Colorado passed SB-217, a police reform bill. This bill remains the widest police reform bill passed since and included a number of provisions restricting police use of violence while increasing the legal accountability of officers to the public. This paper evaluates the impact of the legislation on policing outcomes in Colorado. SB-217 did not impact police-involved deaths, crime incidents, arrests, clearance rates, or a host of other measures related to policing. It may have led to about a 3.28 percentage point decrease in the proportion of crime incidents that were violent crimes. There also appears to have been no change in the composition of police. This provides evidence against SB-217 having a large impact on both police behavior and perceptions of policing as a profession.

Military service has long been an economic vehicle for Americans to achieve higher socioeconomic outcomes. The Civil War marked the first time that Black Americans entered the U.S. Army, and for many it was their first formal employment as free men. At the time, many of the modern benefits of military service did not yet exist. This paper estimates the benefit of military service in the Civil War for Black Americans by estimating the impact of human capital accumulation on the probability of high-skill work in the future. Black Americans developed human capital through experience in ranked leadership roles that developed skills that would have been difficult to build otherwise. Experience in a high-ranking role increases the probability of high-skill work after the war by about 36 percentage points. This evidence suggests that military service may have been valuable to Black Americans outside of the implications of the war's outcome despite few formal benefits.