Texas A&M Ph.D. Student Suhyeon Oh Publishes Research on Race and Legal Representation in Top Economics Journal

During a research seminar at Seoul National University in 2019, Suhyeon Oh met Texas A&M University economist Jonathan Meer and discussed the possibility of pursuing a Ph.D. in the United States. The conversation introduced her to Texas A&M’s Department of Economics and shaped her decision on where to continue her studies. 

Now, Oh has reached a major milestone in those studies. Her paper, “The Role of Race in the Legal Representation of Low-Income Defendants,” has been accepted by American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, one of the leading journals in the field. The paper was coauthored with Dr. Maya Mikdash, who recently completed a Ph.D. in economics at Texas A&M and is now an assistant professor at Louisiana State University. 

For Oh, the publication marks an important step as she enters the academic job market and continues developing a research portfolio in applied microeconomics, public economics, labor economics, and the economics of crime and law. The project also reflects the broader motivation in her work: examining how public institutions affect individuals with limited resources.

“The motivation for this paper is that racial disparities in the criminal justice system are well documented,” she said, “but the role of race in the public defense system is still underexplored.” That gap matters to the many defendants in criminal cases who rely on court-appointed attorneys to be their primary advocates within the legal system. 

Oh and Mikdash set out to examine whether race affects the legal representation in that system and whether defendants experience different outcomes depending on the race of the attorney assigned to their case. 

Court-appointed lawyers play an important role in the justice system, but the system also has challenges. These attorneys are typically paid by the government at rates that are often lower than what many private lawyers charge, and many handle large numbers of cases at once. In some systems, attorneys may be responsible for hundreds of clients each year, which can limit the time they are able to spend on individual cases.  

“The public defense system is such a major part of the criminal justice system in the U.S.,” Oh said. “A vast majority of criminal defendants rely on public defense services to protect their rights in the courtroom.” This system creates a setting where the status of an attorney—such as experience, background or race—can shape how a case is decided.

Using this setting, Oh and Mikdash examined whether defendants experienced different outcomes depending on the race of the attorney assigned to represent them. Their analysis focused on measurable case outcomes, including whether charges were dismissed, whether a defendant was incarcerated and whether the defendant later reoffended. 

They found that Black and white attorneys performed similarly when representing white defendants. Among Black defendants, however, those represented by white attorneys were more likely to have charges dismissed and less likely to be incarcerated than those represented by Black attorneys. The research also found no evidence that being represented by an attorney of a different race increased the likelihood of reoffending later. 

Oh said the paper should not be read as a simple argument for or against matching defendants and attorneys by race. “We are not arguing that people should or should not be represented by an attorney of the same race,” she said. “We are providing empirical evidence on what we should factor in when we assign attorneys to defendants.” 

Oh said the pattern may reflect broader shifts in the social environment surrounding the justice system. “We found that these different-race effects are more pronounced in recent years,” she said, adding that the timing overlaps with a period of heightened national attention to racial justice issues following the murder of George Floyd that may have influence in how people within the legal system respond to these cases.  

“The key challenge in this type of research is that you cannot run a controlled experiment, which would be the ‘gold standard’ for studying how race impacts the legal representation of low-income defendants,” said Dr. Steve Puller, a professor in the Department of Economics and one of Oh’s doctoral advisers. “Suhyeon’s research stands out because of its strong empirical design.” 

Puller went on to explain that the real-world assignment of attorneys to defendants is close to random, which makes the paper especially compelling. “This allows the analysis to approximate an experiment and draw much stronger conclusions about cause and effect.”  

That matters not only for the paper’s credibility, but also for its broader relevance both to academic debates and actual policy conversations.

Oh’s academic path began in Seoul, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Ewha Women's University and later completed a master’s degree in economics at Seoul National University. 

Her interest in economics developed early in life. “My dad also majored in economics,” she said. “Growing up, he would tell me that economics was a useful tool for looking at social phenomena and understanding how the world works.” 

As her studies progressed, she became increasingly interested in how public institutions influence individual welfare, particularly in areas connected to poverty, access to public services, and the criminal justice system. 

“I became interested in studying poverty because I believe well-designed and effectively implemented public services can meaningfully shape individual welfare,” she said. That interest eventually led her to studying legal representation in low-income defendants. 

“This is the perfect intersection of poverty and the criminal justice system,” Oh said. “The criminal justice system is an area of the public sector that can have profound impacts on people’s lives.” People with limited financial resources are more likely to encounter the system, and once inside it, their outcomes can depend heavily on access to effective legal representation. 

During their 2019 visit in Seoul, Meer praised the Department of Economics’ strengths in applied microeconomics and discussed with Oh the broad options for research opportunities available to graduate students. 

After applying to several doctoral programs and receiving multiple offers, Oh chose Texas A&M. That initial conversation gave her a clear sense that the department would support the kind of research she hoped to pursue. “Looking back,” she said, “I’m grateful I had the chance to speak with Dr. Meer to learn about Texas A&M, which—in a special way—has allowed me to pursue the kind of work I want to do.”

Oh said the project would not have been possible without the support she received at Texas A&M. She credits faculty in the department with reading drafts, offering comments and helping her think through the paper over several years. 

“Mark Hoekstra was our adviser at the time, and he was really supportive of our research from the beginning,” she said. Puller and Meer all played a significant role in strengthening the paper through feedback and encouragement. 

Oh’s research reflects the kind of work Texas A&M helps its doctoral students produce, Puller said. “This is a great example of the kind of research we aim to train our Ph.D. students to do,” he said. “It’s work that combines careful empirical methods with questions that really matter for public policy and people’s lives. Publication in an elite economics journal shows that she can take a complex institutional setting and produce evidence that speaks clearly to both academic audiences and real policy questions.” 

That combination, he added, is exactly what universities look for in new faculty. “Suhyeon is another great example of one of our Ph.D. students successfully launching a tenure-track academic career.” 

For Oh, the experience has made her a better, more confident, researcher. “I feel like I’ve grown a lot,” she said. This notable journal placement is the result of the years she spent learning how to ask difficult questions that speak to issues that matter beyond academia.