Publications

“Divergent Paths: Differential Impacts of Minimum Wage Increases on Individuals with Disabilities”

Forthcoming at National Tax Journal with Jonathan Meer and Jeffrey Clemens.

We analyze the differential effects of minimum wage increases on individuals with disabilities using data from the American Community Survey and leveraging state-level minimum wage variation during the 2010s. We find that large minimum wage increases significantly reduce employment and labor force participation for individuals of all working ages with severe disabilities. These declines are accompanied by a downward shift in the wage distribution and an increase in public assistance receipt. By contrast, we find no employment effects for all but young individuals with either non-severe disabilities or no disabilities. Our findings highlight important heterogeneities in minimum wage impacts, raising concerns about labor market policies’ unintended consequences for populations on the margins of the labor force.

“Can High School Counselors Help the Economics Pipeline?”

AEA: Papers and Proceedings (May 2023) with Danila Serra and Jonathan Meer.

High school guidance counselors play an important role in advising high school students on their study and career paths. However, the literature on their characteristics, attitudes and behaviors – including the information they have and share with students on different majors – is scarce. We evaluate the impact of an intervention aimed at informing high school guidance counselors about the field of economics, i.e., what it is, what kind of jobs and wages the major leads to, and what kind of students would do great with it. Our study population is a set of over 200 high schools in Texas that send a high number of students to Texas A&M University. We randomly selected half of the schools to receive an invitation to participate in an informational workshop held by the Department of Economics at Texas A&M University in early September 2019. About 20 percent of the invited schools sent a guidance counselor to the informational workshop. Our outcome variables are measures of students’ interest in the field of economics when applying to and enrolling at Texas A&M University, with a particular focus on women and under-represented minority students.

“Agricultural Aid and Agricultural Production in Africa”

Journal of African Development (2020) With Kwabena Gyimah-Brempong (pre-doctoral work)

This paper uses panel data and a dynamic common correlated effect estimator to investigate the effects of non-food agricultural aid on agricultural output in African countries during the 1970 to 2018 period. Using five measures of agricultural outputs in per capita terms and controlling for a number of covariates, we find that non-food agricultural aid, at the aggregate level, has positive and statistically significant short- and long-term effects on agricultural output in African countries. Using disaggregated aid data, we also find that several components of non-food agricultural aid have significant positive effects on agricultural output in Africa, while some components of non-food agricultural aid have no significant effect on agricultural output, suggesting that the composition of the aid matters for aid effectiveness. The results are robust to several specifications and different estimation methodologies including estimators that account for cross-sectional dependence. The results of this paper have implications on aid policy and research.

Working Papers and Works in Progress

I am currently working on topics related to education, labor economics, and people with disabilities.

“Driving Inclusion: The Effect of Improved Transportation for People with Disabilities”

Revise and Resubmit

People with disabilities face substantial barriers to economic and social participation. I explore how the availability of reliable and flexible transportation, provided by Uber, influences key quality-of-life outcomes for people with disabilities. This additional transportation option may serve as “reliability insurance” in case other modes of transit fail. Using a stacked difference-in-differences approach, I find that the availability of reliable and flexible transportation leads to improvements in labor force engagement and reductions in public assistance dependency among disabled individuals. Additionally, improving access to flexible transportation improves social outcomes, as indicated by increased marriage rates. Comparing the reduction in public assistance with the cost of enhanced transportation options to users suggests that there may be efficiency gains from government intervention in this setting.

“Going the Distance: The Contemporaneous and Intergenerational Effects of Accessible Transportation”

Transportation is a well-established barrier to employment for individuals with disabilities even though access to public transportation is a guaranteed right under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Paratransit programs exist nationwide to provide accessible transportation for both the elderly and people with disabilities, but do these programs improve employment and labor force outcomes for prime-age disabled people? Using restricted decennial Census Data, my preliminary results find that these programs have slight positive impacts on employment outcomes for people with disabilities. As a placebo check, I show that paratransit has no impact on the employment outcomes of non-disabled adults who are unable to access this service. Following this contemporaneous analysis, I will explore how access to paratransit programs impacted the adult outcomes of children whose parents were disabled.

“Dynamic Sales Tax Competition: Evidence at the Border”

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Working Paper Series, 2020 with Nadia Greenhalgh-Stanley, Shawn Rohlin, Jeffrey Thompson. (pre-doctoral work)

We examine both vertical and horizontal tax competition over time by studying the strategic response of county sales taxation to state sales taxes and to cross-border neighboring municipalities’ combined (state and county) taxes. Using county and state sales tax data from 2003 through 2009, we employ both static and dynamic panel analysis as well as an instrumental variables approach in combination with a border analysis. Our results confirm the presence of tax competition in the cross section, as previous studies have found. Results from the fixedeffects and dynamic panel analysis also indicate the presence of vertical competition, though quite small, as counties are consistently responsive to changes in their own state sales tax level across all models and specifications. However, the panel findings suggest little to no horizontal tax competition. Following Parchet (2019), we address additional concerns about endogeneity by instrumenting the neighboring-county sales tax rate with the state-level sales tax rate of the neighboring state. Results from instrumental variables analysis reinforce the presence of a small vertical tax competition between local and state sales tax policies. Interestingly, our results, like those of Parchet (2019), indicate that cross-border local sales tax rates act as strategic substitutes.

“Beyond the Text: Understanding Opt-Out, Dosage, and Response Disparities in an SMS Intervention”

with Miranda Lambert, Kalena Cortes, and Brian Holzman.

“The Resilience of Local Economies: What Helps Rural Communities and Small Towns Survive Economic Shocks?”

with Jeffrey Thompson. (pre-doctoral work)