Work in Progress
The Geography of University R&D and Local Agglomeration in the United States
This project builds a new harmonized panel of U.S. university research and development expenditures from the NSF HERD survey, covering 1972–2024. The data reconcile major changes in reporting over time, distinguish campuses from system-level aggregates, and link universities and research fields to commuting zones to measure the spatial distribution of research capacity. Using these data, the project studies how university R&D is concentrated across places, how research activity reshapes local economies, and how grant-driven changes in university investment affect nearby employment, wages, and regional development.
Labor Market Conditions and Military Enlistment
This paper addresses how local labor markets affect military enlistment across states. Prior studies focused on the relationship between national unemployment and military enlistment, disregarding geographical heterogeneity which may cause one part of the country to react stronger than others. I develop a new way of thinking about who enlists and why using a cohort-based identification strategy.
Pre-doc Contributions
Cash Transfers and Productive Inclusion: Evidence from Bolsa Familia
We study how cash transfers affect work and health. Exploiting an increase in the generosity of the world's largest cash-transfer program for the extremely poor, we show that the reform raised employment by 5 percent while sharply improving health: hospitalization fell 8 percent and mortality 14 percent, saving roughly 1,000 lives. These findings challenge the view that transfers reduce work. Instead, transfers can relax binding subsistence and health constraints, raise productivity, and expand labor supply. We formalize this mechanism in a model of productive inclusion and use it to evaluate welfare, yielding lessons for antipoverty policy design in low-income settings.
Attacking Networks of Tax Evasion: Theory and Evidence from Paraguay
The creation of a tax system that raises revenues efficiently and equitably is one of the central challenges in economic development. This project combines new theory and a series of three Randomized Controlled Trials in Paraguay to provide new insights into tax evasion by firms, enforcement spillovers through production networks, and the optimal targeting of tax enforcement activities.
Individual and Organizational Determinants of Evasion in Customs: Evidence from Pakistan
Research Question: Which individuals are most/least able to detect evasion of customs duties? How can teams be organized to maximize performance?