Publications
Can Expanding Contraceptive Access Reduce Adverse Infant Health Outcomes? Journal of Human Resources. May 2024.
Soda Taxes, Consumption, and Health Outcomes for High School Students. Economics Letters. Volume 234. January 2024. Article 111507.
Expanded Contraceptive Access Linked to Increase in College Completion Among Women in Colorado, with Sara Yeatman, Amanda Stevenson, Katie Genadek, Jane Menken and Stefanie Möllborn. Health Affairs. Volume 41:12. December, 2022. Pages 1754-1762.
Media Coverage: The Hill, Medical Xpress, ScienMag
Do Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes Improve Public Health for High School Aged Adolescents? Health Economics. Volume 32 (1). January 2023. Pages 47– 64.
Media Coverage: Medical Xpress
Salary Disclosure and Individual Effort: Evidence from the National Hockey League. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Volume 202, October 2022, Pages 471-497.
Media Coverage: Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Journal (podcast), Fortune, Wired
Working Papers
When Beer is Safer than Water: Beer Availability and Mortality from Water-Borne Illnesses. with Francisca Antman. Conditionally accepted at the Journal of Development Economics
Abstract - We investigate the impact of beer on mortality during the Industrial Revolution in 18th century England. Due to the brewing process, beer represented an improvement over available water sources during this period prior to the widespread understanding of the link between water quality and human health. Using a wide range of identification strategies to derive measures of beer scarcity driven by tax increases, weather events, and soil quality, we show that beer scarcity was associated with higher mortality, especially in the summer months where mortality was more likely to be driven by waterborne illnesses related to contaminated drinking water. We also leverage variation in inherent water quality across parishes using two proxies for water quality to show that beer scarcity resulted in greater deaths in areas with worse water quality. Together, the evidence supports the hypothesis that beer had a major impact on human health during this important period in economic development.
Soda Taxes, BMI, and Obesity: Evidence from Seattle, with Anja Gruber
Abstract - This paper uses restricted-access data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey to assess whether the sugar-sweetened beverage tax levied in Seattle in 2018 led to declines in body mass index (BMI) and the rate of obesity. We implement an event-study design which compares these outcomes in the treated region to individuals living in untaxed areas. We find no evidence of divergence in trends prior to the tax, and that after the tax went into effect both outcomes declined. We estimate that the tax led to a reduction of .61 BMI points and reduced the obesity rate by 4.5 percentage points. We find that the declines were largest for individuals with lower incomes, those without a college degree, and younger people.
A Parameterization to Describe Changes in Modern US Fertility Schedules, with Amanda Stevenson and Leslie Root (Under review)
Abstract - Describing change in fertility over time is a key task of demographic analysis. Despite widespread agreement that the total fertility rate (TFR) provides only a partial characterization of period fertility and interpreting its change over time is fraught, we continue to rely on it for these purposes. This reliance is driven by many factors, but one is that the TFR provides a value whose change over time may be directly analyzed. By contrast, the vector of age specific fertility rates (ASFRs) provides a more complete characterization of period fertility. However, describing change in ASFRs over time is challenging because a timeseries of differences of vectors is not directly interpretable. Parameterizations of ASFR curves were widely employed to characterize fertility change during fertility decline in the 20th Century, but these tools do not fit current age schedules and have fallen out of favor. Therefore, indicators such as teen fertility rates, mean age at birth, and mean age at first birth (among others) are sometimes used in addition to or rather than TFR. Each of these has clear value, but none provides an overall picture of the schedule's shape which might allow the description of change in that shape over time. In this brief paper, we modify an existing parameterization of the ASFR curve with the purpose of providing a suite of parameters to quantify contemporary ASFR curves' changes in shape and position over time. We illustrate the utility of this parameterization by describing change in the ASFR curves of selected US states 2003-2018.
Works in Progress
A Lifesaving Subscription? The Effect of Expanding Access to Direct-Acting Antivirals on Hepatitis-Related Illness, with Barton Willage
Understanding the Great Resignation - Worker Reallocation following the COVID-19 Pandemic, with Jeronimo Carballo, Richard Mansfield, and Anja Gruber
The Age and Parity Fertility Effect of the Colorado Family Planning Initiative, with Amanda Stevenson, Sara Yeatman, Katie Genadek, Jane Menken and Stefanie Möllborn.
The Effect of Restrictions at the US-Mexico Border on Employment Outcomes, with Francisca Antman and Alexander Imhof
For the Love of the Game? The Effect of Financial Incentives on Student-Athlete Performance, with Tanja Kirmse