Research

Working Papers

  • Estimating the Impact of Public Policy with Unobserved Variation
    Updated October 2024

    This paper provides evidence on the impact of state-level public policy when some proportion of treatment variation is unobserved, using a novel case of the two-sample instrumental variables estimator. When treatment varies within jurisdiction, estimating the effects of policy and failing to control for within-jurisdiction variation will bias estimates, even when the unobserved population is small. This article shows that combining standard intention-to-treat corrections for non-compliance with two-sample instrumental variable methods can obtain consistent estimates of the effect of interest, even when some sub-jurisdiction policy variation is unobserved in the data, provided information on treated population aggregates is available.

  • 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.