Research

Working Papers

  • Estimating the Impact of Public Policy with Unobserved Variation[PDF]
    Updated November 2024

    In recent years, many sub-state jurisdictions in the United States have introduced local economic policies previous only seen at the state or federal level. Because most publicly available data does not identify individuals at these local levels, estimating the impact of these policies is difficult as local variation will bias state-level estimates. In this paper I propose a solution that combines an intention-to-treat approach with two-sample IV where aggregates are sufficient for the first-stage estimation and identifies the local average treatment effect (LATE) of the policy. Using the recent prevalence of local minimum wage policy changes as an example, I show that estimating the impact of these policies on workers with this method provides statistically distinct results, though differences are economically small and qualitatively similar to previous studies.

  • Gender Diļ¬€erences and Incentives in Competition: New Evidence from Tennis Grand Slam Tournaments
    Updated June 2024

    This paper examines gender differences in responsiveness to incentives by modeling players' continuation value directly using real-world betting odds and data from the 2011-2019 tennis Grand Slam tournaments. In early round match-ups men tend to exert more effort than women given the same continuation value, but when examining competitors of similar ability across the whole tournament differences in responsiveness disappear. For a 100,000 unit increase in the expected value of winning a match, men tend to increase their probability of winning by 0.9 percent, versus 0.7 percent for women. These results highlight the importance of the value of remaining in the competition verses the contemporaneous round prize in these settings.

  • The Effects of Minimum Wage Policy on Self-Employment: Evidence from the Current Population Survey[PDF]
    Updated December 2023

    This paper studies the effects of minimum wages on unincorporated self-employed workers in the US using the 1988-2020 Current Population Survey. Standard state level difference-in-differences estimates of self-employment and earnings elasticities find that increasing the minimum wage tends to decrease self-employment but has little effect on hours worked or earnings in the year following the change. Instrumental variable estimates are consistent with these findings but show large earnings gains for these workers. Using a simple model of labor market search, I show that minimum wage increases are potentially welfare improving and the welfare effects can be identified by changes in self-employment. Given this model, I show that between 1988-2020 minimum wage changes have been welfare improving on average.