I am an Associate Professor in the School of Economics at Drexel University and currently a visiting scholar at the Vermont Center for Behavioral Science Research on Climate and the Environment at Middlebury College.

Fields: Macro/Labor, Environmental

Research Interests: My research spans macroeconomics, labor, and environmental economics. A recurring theme in this work is the role of technological change—from internet-based job search platforms to agricultural innovations in farming and tobacco production—in reshaping behavior, economic outcomes, and the physical environment. While these domains form the core of my research agenda, my interests are broad: I have also worked on trade policy, the intergenerational transmission of wealth, and racialized patterns in media coverage.

Methodologically, my work is both theoretical and empirical. My theoretical work uses decision-theoretic and partial equilibrium models of search, game theory, and dynamic general equilibrium models. My empirical work employs a wide range of tools, including reduced-form dynamic panel techniques, structural vector autoregressions, simulation-based estimators, natural language processing, and both qualitative and quantitative analysis of primary historical sources.

With Ledo in Silverton, CO

All Research Macro Labor Environmental Technology Other Topics

Work in Progress

The Magnitude and Durability of the Effect of Air Pollution on Support for Environmental Policy
[Substantial revision in progress; draft available upon request]
Demographic Correlates of Humanizing Media Coverage of Homicide: Evidence from the Boston Globe, 1976-84 (w/ Emily Ocasio)
[Substantial revision in progress; draft available upon request]
Agricultural Technology and Deforestation: Evidence on the Borlaug-Jevons Debate from Holocene Pollen Records
[Work in progress]
Sewing the Seeds of Environmentalism: How the Civilian Conservation Corps Shaped Environmental Careers Across Generations
[Work in progress]
Soil, Bright-Leaf Tobacco and the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth (w/ Bryce Stucki)
[Work in progress]
The Incidence of Non-Compete Agreements in Low-Wage Labor Markets (w/ Bart Hobjin and Andre Kurmann)
[Work in Progress]

Publications

Destabilizing Search Technology
Journal of Monetary Economics (July 2024)

Abstract

Modern job search technologies enable job seekers to monitor the arrival of newly posted vacancies. This paper conceptualizes search as a monitoring decision and shows that monitoring technologies give rise to a novel source of strategic complementarities in search and can thus lead to potentially destabilizing multiplicity of equilibria. The model provides a theory of belief-driven fluctuations in labor supply that can permanently shift the path of the economy, and offers an explanation for persistently weak wage growth despite low unemployment during the recovery from the Great Recession.

On the Inefficiency of Non-Competes in Low-Wage Labor Markets (w/ Bart Hobijn and Andre Kurmann)
Economica (February 2024)

Abstract

We study the efficiency of non-compete agreements (NCAs) in an equilibrium model of labour turnover. The model is consistent with empirical studies showing that NCAs reduce turnover and average wages for low-wage workers. The model also predicts that, by reducing turnover, NCAs raise recruitment and employment. We show that optimal NCA policy: (i) is characterized by a Hosios-like condition that balances the benefits of higher employment against the costs of inefficient congestion and poaching; (ii) depends critically on the minimum wage; and (iii) alone cannot always achieve the constrained-efficient allocation—a result that also holds for optimal minimum wage policy—yet with both policies, efficiency is always attainable. To guide policymakers, we derive a sufficient statistic in the form of an easily computed employment threshold above which NCAs are necessarily inefficiently restrictive, and show that employment levels in current low-wage US labour markets typically exceed this threshold. Finally, we calibrate the model and show that Oregon's 2008 NCA ban for low-wage workers increased welfare modestly (by roughly 0.1%), and that if policymakers had also raised the minimum wage to its optimal level conditional on the enacted NCA ban (a 30% increase), then welfare would have increased more substantially—by over 1%.

Anticipated Productivity and the Labor Market (w/ Sanjay Chugh and Ryan Chahrour)
Quantitative Economics (July 2023)

Abstract

We identify the main shock driving fluctuations in long-horizon productivity expectations, consistent with theories of TFP news. The identified shock induces strong comovement patterns in output, consumption, investment, employment, and stock prices even though TFP does not change significantly for more than 2 years. A labor search model in which wages are determined by a cash-flow sharing rule, rather than the present value of match surplus, matches the observed responses to the news shock. The model also matches the empirical patterns of vacancies, labor force participation, hours, and job-finding rates. The proposed wage rule is consistent with empirical responses of wages to both anticipated and unanticipated productivity changes.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Habit-formation in Internet Use among Unemployed Workers
Economics Letters (June 2022)

Abstract

This paper tests for habit-formation in leisure-related internet use (LIU) using time-diary data from a panel of unemployed workers. Drawing on insights from the consumption-habit literature, I use a model of intertemporal time allocation to derive a test for habit-formation in leisure activities. The data reveal strong evidence of habit-formation in LIU among the Generation-X age cohort. With the exception of reading, I find no evidence of habit-formation in offline leisure.

Wage Offers and On-the-job Search (w/ Dan Bernhardt)
Canadian Journal of Economics (May 2022)

Abstract

We study the wage-setting problem of an employer with private information about demand for its product when workers can engage in costly on-the-job search. Employers understand that low wage offers may convey bad news that induces workers to search. The unique perfect sequential equilibrium wage strategy is characterized by: (i) pooling by intermediate-revenue employers on a common wage that just deters search, (ii) discontinuously lower revealing offers by low-revenue employers for whom the benefit of deterring search fails to warrant the required high pooling wage and (iii) high revealing offers by high-revenue employers seeking to deter aggressive raiders.

The Discouragement Rate: An Index of Discouragement-Induced Hardship
Applied Economics Letters (September 2021)

Abstract

In 1979, the Levitan Commission identified discouragement as one of three main sources of economic hardship, and recommended the development of an index to measure the extent of the problem. Over 40 years later, no such index exists. This letter proposes an index of discouragement-induced hardship and documents its evolution over time and across demographic groups.

Learning and Job Search Dynamics during the Great Recession
Journal of Monetary Economics (January 2021)

Abstract

Krueger and Mueller (2011) document that search effort declined with unemployment duration during the Great Recession. I show that variation in past effort explains this decline. Furthermore, job offers increase subsequent effort. These facts are inconsistent with standard models of search. I introduce a model of sequential search in which workers are uncertain about the offer arrival process and learn through search. Evolving beliefs influence search through two competing channels: the opportunity cost of leisure and the option value of unemployment. Estimation of the model indicates that learning provides a strong account of job search dynamics during the Great Recession.

Misallocation and Productivity Effects of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff (w/ Eric W. Bond, Mario Crucini, and Joel Rodrigue)
Review of Economic Dynamics (January 2013)

Abstract

Using a newly created microeconomic archive of US imports at the tariff line level for 1930–1933, we construct industry-level tariff wedges incorporating the input–output structure of US economy and the heterogeneous role of imports across sectors of the economy. We use these wedges to show that the average tariff rate of 46% in 1933 substantially understated the true impact of the Smoot–Hawley (SH) tariff structure, which we estimate to be equivalent to a uniform tariff rate of 70%. We use these wedges to calculate the impact of the Smoot–Hawley tariffs on total factor productivity and welfare. In our benchmark parameterization, we find that tariff protection reduced TFP by 1.2% relative to free trade prior to the Smoot–Hawley legislation. TFP fell by an additional 0.5% between 1930 and 1933 due to Smoot–Hawley. We also conduct counterfactual policy exercises and examine the sensitivity of our results to changes in the elasticity of substitution and the import share. A doubling of the substitution elasticities yields a TFP decline of almost 5% relative to free trade, with an additional reduction due to SH of 0.4%.