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Bocar A Ba

Assistant Professor of Economics
Economics

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Assistant Professor of Economics · 2021 - Present Economics, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

In the News


Published September 17, 2021
Five New Faculty Join Department of Economics

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Recent Publications


Officer-Involved: The Media Language of Police Killings

Journal Article The Quarterly Journal of Economics · April 8, 2025 AbstractThis article examines language patterns in U.S. television news coverage of police killings. First, we document that the media use syntactic structures—such as passive voice, nominalizations, and int ... Full text Cite

Political diversity in U.S. police agencies

Journal Article American Journal of Political Science · January 1, 2025 Partisans are divided on policing policy, which may affect officer behavior. We merge rosters from 99 of the 100 largest local U.S. agencies—over one third of local law enforcement agents nationwide—with voter files to study police partisanship. Police ske ... Full text Cite

JUE Insight: Hot temperatures, aggression, and death at the hands of the police: Evidence from the U.S

Journal Article Journal of Urban Economics · July 1, 2024 We study the effect of temperature on police-involved civilian deaths in the U.S. from 2000 to 2016. We show that both violent crimes and the number of officers assaulted or killed increase on warmer days (≥17°C), indicating greater personal danger to offi ... Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


Social Movements and Corporate Opportunities

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2023 - 2026

Causal Research on Alternatives to Policing

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Arnold Ventures · 2024 - 2025

The Impact of Policing and Criminal Justice on Families

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by United States Naval Academy · 2022 - 2023

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Education, Training & Certifications


The University of Chicago · 2018 Ph.D.