Job Market Candidates

Does Trade Stabilize Food Prices Evenly During a Supply Shock? Evidence from India’s Pulses Market 

Abstract: Developing countries often rely on trade policy to stabilize food prices during supply disruptions, yet the spatial distribution of these benefits remains poorly understood. This paper studies India's 2015-2016 pulses crisis, when consecutive domestic production shortfalls sharply raised pulses prices and triggered a surge in imports. We examine whether trade-based price stabilization reached domestic markets evenly or weakened with distance from major import ports. Using a district-level panel of wholesale pulses price from 2009 to 2019 and a difference-in-differences design, we show that the import surge did not provide uniform price relief. During the crisis, each additional 100 kilometers from a major import port translated into about a 1.7 percent larger increase in pulses price. A simple calibration suggests that imports lowered prices by about 11 percent near ports, but more than half of this relief had dissipated by the median district-port distance of 538 km. The results suggest that while imports can moderate national price spikes, their stabilizing effects may be limited by incomplete internal market integration.

Dynamic Efficiency, Strategic Entry, and Spillover Distortion in Common-Pool Resource Buybacks: Evidence from the Texas Inshore Shrimp License Buyback

Abstract: Buyback programs are widely used to reduce overcapitalization and generate social benefits in settings such as emissions abatement, land retirement, groundwater conservation, and fisheries. Evaluations typically measure outcomes within program boundaries, even though a growing literature shows that gains may be offset by leakage and spillovers: displaced activity moves elsewhere, while agents who remain gain access to a less crowded resource. This paper studies how those gains affect participation in dynamic buybacks. As a program removes capacity, the continuation value of remaining participants rises, creating an incentive to hold out rather than exit. The program therefore faces a paradox: successful removals increase the value of staying, weakening the participation required for further progress.

I quantify this mechanism in the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's inshore shrimp license buyback, one of the longest-running fisheries buyback on record, with 41 rounds conducted over 26 years across five bay systems. I estimate a two stage structural model of vessels' spatial fishing choices and license-retirement decisions, then forward-simulate the continuation value of remaining active licenses. The removal of 1,135 licenses increased survivors' continuation values enough to reduce auction participation by approximately 26% during the program's mature phase. The resulting spillover was limited by the composition of purchases: approximately two-thirds of retired licenses were already inactive, so much of the program's budget removed nominal capacity that generated no fishing effort. At the same cost, screening purchases for recent activity would have retired 17% more fishing effort and generated 30% more surplus.

Caregiving while Sandwiched: Multigenerational Households and Human Capital Investments

Abstract: Across the developing world, populations are aging faster than the public systems meant to support them, leaving the care of frail elderly parents to families—and often to a middle generation still raising its own children. Whether the demands of caring for an aging parent come at the expense of the next generation is a central question for aging societies, yet existing evidence is largely descriptive or focused on a single generation at a time. Using the Indonesia Family Life Survey, a longitudinal multi-generation panel from a setting with limited formal elder care, we characterize the sandwich generation and examine how obligations toward aging parents relate to investment in caregivers' own children. The paper speaks to how families absorb the rising cost of eldercare across generations, and to the case for long-term-care policy in middle-income countries.

Can AI-Generated Cheap Talk Correct Hypothetical Bias? Evidence from a Food Choice Experiment

Abstract: To help researchers and policymakers obtain valid estimates of consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for food attributes that markets do not yet price, I study whether a cheap talk script generated by a large language model can mitigate hypothetical bias in discrete choice experiments more effectively than the conventional script that has dominated practice for two decades. Cheap talk is the most widely used device for reducing hypothetical bias, yet its effectiveness is inconsistent, in part because every researcher writes their own script, making the script itself an uncontrolled source of variation across studies. I field an online food choice experiment on certification-labeled snakehead fish fillets with Chinese consumers, randomly assigning respondents to three treatments: a classic cheap talk script, an AI-generated (ChatGPT) script used without human curation, and a real-incentive benchmark in which one choice set is binding. The results suggest that classic cheap talk leaves WTP overstated by roughly 46 to 52 percent relative to the benchmark, whereas AI cheap talk brings WTP close to the real-incentive level. The adjustment operates primarily through restored price sensitivity rather than through changes in attribute valuation, and a probe of an algorithm-appreciation mechanism finds no support. Because a fixed prompt produces a reproducible script at near-zero cost, AI cheap talk offers a standardized, low-cost alternative to classic cheap talk; I release the generating prompt and estimation code. These findings will inform researchers designing stated-preference studies and policymakers who rely on WTP estimates to evaluate food labeling and certification programs.

Participation incentives and hypothetical bias: Evidence from two experiments

Abstract: Hypothetical bias (HB) is a common concern in stated preference studies, where respondents often overstate their willingness to pay for attributes of interest. Past studies suggest that participation incentives may influence respondents’ behavior, but their effects on HB have not been systematically tested. We conduct two split-sample experiments in two studies for an online discrete choice experiment (CE), an alligator hide product CE and a donation CE. In each study, respondents are randomly assigned to one of three treatments: a hypothetical treatment without an incentive, a hypothetical treatment with a participation incentive, and a real-payment treatment in which respondents purchase or donate using the incentive amount provided, keeping any remaining balance. HB is measured by comparing willingness to pay estimates from hypothetical treatments with those from the real-payment treatment. Our results show that participation incentives lead to behavioral changes such as higher opt-in rates and stronger perceptions of consequentiality. However, although HB persists across both contexts, offering a participant incentive in a hypothetical treatment does not lead to statistically significant differences in HB.

Extreme Weather and Trade Costs: Evidence from Mississippi River Drought

Abstract: This paper examines how localized inland waterway disruptions propagate through the U.S. grain trading network. We develop a partial-equilibrium model that characterizes river disruptions as segment-specific iceberg trade-cost shocks to trace how these shocks reallocate trade across routes and modes of domestic transportation. Empirically, we estimate shipment-specific trade elasticities with respect to barge rates by combining bilateral state-level trade flows across 10 non-consecutive years (2007–2024) with hydrological data. Using a route- and time-specific disruption index constructed from these river-level data as an instrument for barge freight rates, we show that river bottlenecks significantly inflate transportation costs and lead to substantial trade reallocation. Counterfactual simulations reveal that eliminating these disruptions would have increased aggregate grain trade by $54.7 billion (2.2%) over the study period, generating highly heterogeneous impacts across states and shipment types. Crucially, downstream bottlenecks generate far greater trade losses than comparable upstream shocks due to their higher network centrality, underscoring the critical need to spatially target investments based on their network-wide trade effects.

Fueling frictions: how does Nigeria fuel subsidy removal reshape healthcare access

Abstract: Universal, untargeted subsidies are among the most common transfers in low-income countries, but whether the households that captured most of their benefit are the ones who bear the cost of removal is largely unknown. We study Nigeria's abrupt May 2023 petrol subsidy removal. Digitizing Nigeria's administrative fuel-depot activity records and linking them to household and health surveys, we show the reform repriced fuel and transportation access across space overnight: petrol prices surged and transport fares spiked immediately, and communities farther from their supplying depots saw price increases exceeding transportation's marginal cost, a markup consistent with weak competition in local fuel markets once prices were liberalized. We identify effects with two complementary designs: a difference-in-differences design using predetermined depot distance, and a shift-share instrumental-variables strategy that instruments realized local fuel-price changes with depot geography. On-time childhood vaccination fell by roughly two percentage points, concentrated in doses requiring a return clinic visit. Modern contraceptive use fell 2 to 5 percentage points, and antenatal care quantity and content quality declined, with birth size shifting toward smaller categories in rural areas and larger categories in urban areas—consistent with an offsetting drop in combustion-related air pollution. These losses concentrate in rural communities with low health-facility density and among poorer households. These results reveal a double regressivity: the households that captured the largest subsidy benefits are not those who bear the largest adjustment cost. Sequencing matters—liberalizing prices without competitive local distribution risks locking in such costs, which are then expensive to reverse.

The Role of Access to Bank Capital in Place-Based Policies

Abstract: To assist policymakers and economic developers in measuring the effectiveness of using firm-specific incentives to attract large manufacturing investments and catalyze broader economic development, I study the role of access to community bank capital in catalyzing spillovers from large manufacturing plants to small business development. I construct a novel dataset of large manufacturing plant openings between 2010 and 2018 and estimate the impact of these openings on small business lending, creation, and expansion in the local economy, using difference-in-differences designs with multiple control groups. The results suggest that community banks drive post-opening increases in small business lending, which translates to higher growth rates in small business creation and expansion. Small businesses in complementary industries experience the largest growth, while small businesses that may compete for labor and other resources do not. The main results are augmented by a Spatial Equilibrium Model that combines commuting patterns, lending patterns, and firm heterogeneity to analyze the role of community bank small business lending in supporting small businesses after exogenous productivity shocks. These findings will inform policymakers evaluating which places will benefit from place-based policies and financial regulators monitoring the consolidation of the banking industry.

Peer Effects in Regulation: Compliance Spillovers, Firm Size, and Market Structure

Abstract and draft available on the candidate's website or upon request.

Private vs Public Forest Land Conservation: The Impact on Forest Outcome

Abstract and draft available on the candidate's website or upon request.

Solar Tariffs and the Energy Transition: Clean-Investment Dynamics and Climate Policy Responses in the Global Economy

Abstract: Governments increasingly use trade protection to promote domestic production of clean-energy investment goods, yet such policies can simultaneously expand domestic production and welfare while delaying the energy transition, increasing emissions, and affecting welfare across countries through climate change. To quantify this trade-off, I develop a multi-region, forward-looking integrated assessment model with bilateral trade in clean-energy investment goods, endogenous renewable and fossil generation capacity accumulation, and climate-economy feedbacks. I also develop an algorithm that jointly solves bilateral goods-market equilibrium and the open-loop Nash equilibrium, allowing regions to adjust welfare-maximizing emissions paths as trade and climate conditions evolve.

I apply the framework to evaluate U.S. tariffs on imported solar modules. By raising renewable-investment costs, the tariffs slow clean-capacity accumulation, increase electricity carbon intensity, and thereby raise U.S. and global emissions despite expanding U.S. module production. In the benchmark calibration, an additional 20 percent tariff reduces U.S. renewable generation capacity in 2100 by roughly 10 percent and increases cumulative U.S. emissions by about 0.4 percent. Although climate policy adjusts endogenously, it does not fully offset these effects. Consequently, U.S. welfare is hump-shaped, peaking near a 20 percent tariff before declining as higher investment costs, trade distortions, and climate damages outweigh manufacturing gains. Under current conditions, import reductions fall primarily on the rest of the world rather than China, lowering its module production and welfare while increasing U.S. and China's shares of global module output. These findings demonstrate how trade protection propagates through clean investment and climate-policy responses to shape economic and climate outcomes.

Is Uniform Utility Distribution Pricing Consistent with Efficient Development Siting? Evidence from the US Electricity Market

Abstract: In principle, we expect utility energy prices (gas and electricity) to be effectively determined by the costs of three sub-components: generation, transmission, and distribution. While generation costs are straightforwardly dependent on the amount of electricity used, transmission and especially distribution are generally independent of electricity. The central argument of this research is that while regulated utilities recover distribution costs through a uniform per-kWh charge approved by the PUC to reflect average costs across the service area, the actual costs of distribution vary substantially within the service area based on the population density of the area in question. This raises the possibility that urban areas which are cheaper to wire may in effect subsidize areas which are more expensive to wire.

Identifying Counterfactual Solar PV Sites with CNN and Propensity Score Matching: Effects on 
Land Transactions

Abstract: Utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity in the U.S. Midwest grew from 10 MW in 2009 to over 23 GW in 2024, converting more than 86,000 acres, mostly former cropland and pasture. Existing estimates of solar’s effects on nearby land values conflict: Abashidze and Taylor (2023) find no spillover to farmland prices, while Hu et al. (2025) report a 19% premium within two miles. This inconsistency may reflect site-selection endogeneity: both treated parcels and distance-based controls are defined relative to locations developers selected. I train a convolutional neural network on a 25-channel geospatial image stack of siting-relevant features to predict solar-suitable but undeveloped locations, estimate development propensity scores using grid and electricity-market data, and match each realized Midwest site to similar undeveloped sites. I link realized and counterfactual sites to land transactions within 5 km, cleaned with standard transaction filters from prior studies, and estimate stacked difference-in-differences models over three years before and after construction. Pre-treatment trends are flat, supporting the parallel-trends assumption. Preliminary results show no significant average effect of PV construction on nearby farmland or large-lot residential prices across specifications; large-lot prices per acre rise transiently in the first two post-construction years before fading. A triple difference by distance indicates that parcels within 3 km of a built site sell at a modest discount relative to parcels 3-5 km away, the opposite of the reported near-site premium. These findings suggest positive estimates in prior work partly reflect siting selection, with implications for siting policy and rural compensation design.