Below are research lines that I am currently working on along with brief descriptions of the work.
Distress with Distress: The Financial Health of Higher Education Institutions Affects Demand (w/ B. Meehan, J. Heflin) [working paper]
We investigate the causal relationship between university financial health and the interest of new students, using Yeshiva University as a case study. Because financial well-being and student demand-measured here by applications and first-year enrollment-are typically endogenous, we leverage a well-publicized adverse shock to identify the effect of financial distress on student interest. In 2008, it was revealed that Bernie Madoff had lost more than $100 million of Yeshiva University's endowment in a Ponzi scheme. We exploit this exogenous shock to its endowment. We show that Yeshiva University experienced substantial declines in applications which was not observed in similar institutions. Further, we document adverse downstream effects with reduced first-year enrollment and tuition revenues. This indicates that incoming students and their families pay attention to an institution's financial well-being in the school-selection decision.
Hiring External or Internal Talent? Business Education Leadership in Higher Education [working paper]
I examine whether the appointment of internal versus external deans affects enrollment in business schools at large public universities in the United States. Using leadership transitions at 73 business schools from 2008-09 through 2022-23 and enrollment data, I employ a stacked difference-in-differences identification strategy. The appointment of a new dean has a small and statistically insignificant effect on business school enrollment. However, estimates reveal substantial heterogeneity by hire type: internal appointments are associated with enrollment growth of approximately 5-6 percent per year, whereas external appointments are associated with no meaningful change. These effects are present in both undergraduate and graduate programs and lead to increases in business schools’ share of total university enrollment. The findings indicate that, on the key performance indicator of enrollment, internal hires outperform external ones in this context.
Surviving the Deanship: Difference Between Internal and External Hires in Turnover at Business Schools [working paper]
I examine whether internally promoted deans of business schools experience longer tenures than externally hired deans. Using data on 73 large, public higher education institutions, I document leadership histories and distinguish internal from external hires. Survival analysis and regression approaches consistently show that internal hires have substantially longer tenures. Internally promoted deans are approximately 30% less likely to exit in any given year and serve roughly 1.3 additional years on average. Further, the longevity advantage of internal hires is concentrated in un-named business schools.
Chicago Boys: Economic Liberalization and the Chilean Economy (with B. Zhahadai) [working paper]
A group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago, known as the Chicago Boys, moved into Chilean policymaking positions in the late 1970s. They implemented widespread free market reforms. We quantify the causal impact of these policies on the Chilean economy by applying the Synthetic Control Method. This method generates a synthetic Chile, mirroring the macroeconomic and political characteristics of the actual country, albeit without the presence of the Chicago Boys. By 2019 we show that the Chilean GDP per capita is 4012 USD higher than it would have been had the reforms not been implemented.
Do Elections Encourage Public Actors to be More Responsive? (with C. Williams) [working paper]
In the U.S. many public services are provided by individuals who are selected in local elections. The incentives created by the election mechanism are relatively understudied. One of these public actors is the prosecutor. The U.S. is unique in the world in its use of popular elections to select and retain local prosecutors. They exercise an enormous amount of discretion, and the election mechanism serves as the primary accountability tool. Critics point to voters' poor information, weak incentives to become informed, and insufficient knowledge to properly evaluate as arguments against the ability of elections to properly incentivize prosecutors to do their job well. Nevertheless, empirical research has documented important distortions in prosecutorial decision making close to election periods. This has called into question further the institution's appropriateness. Here, we ask whether elections at least encourage local prosecutors to be responsive to citizens. We design a novel field experiment where we send an information request to a randomly selected sample of offices in the country. Whether the office responds to the request is our measurement of responsiveness. We show that offices whose head is up for re-election in 2020 are more likely to respond than offices led by prosecutors not up for re-election this year. We also show that offices in states that appoint their local prosecutors are substantially less likely to respond than a matched, similar set of offices in states that use popular elections. Thus, we provide evidence that the election mechanism encourages public actors to be more responsive.
Bargaining in the Shadow of the Trial? Deaths of Law Enforcement Officials and the Plea Bargaining Process (with D. Bonneau)[working paper]
Economists who study plea bargaining start with the assumption that the default outcome if bargaining fails is a jury trial. This framework is known as "bargaining in the shadow of the trial". Criminologists and legal scholars question this framework's validity. We provide the first test of this conceptual framework. Collecting data on every individual arresting in the state of Florida between 2004 and 2017, we can track cases as charges are filed, dropped, plea bargained, and taken to trial. This allows us to estimate the difference between sentences received via plea bargaining and trial convictions. Our identification strategy is to consider deaths of law enforcement officials, which we argue is a tragic event affecting a local community. This makes salient the importance of violence and crime and these community members make up the potential jury pool. We consider cases that were already in process at the time in the county of the death as those treated by this quasi-natural experiment. Using a difference-in-difference strategy, we show that the plea discount diminishes with these deaths, which is the direct prediction of the bargaining in the shadow of the trial framework. This effect is larger for serious felonies, for gun-related deaths, for deaths associated with more Google searching for law enforcement officials, for cases closer to their trial, and for deaths that result in road dedications. Furthermore, we show that the deaths also lead to more cases going to trial. Thus, we are the first to establish a causal effect of changes in the anticipated jury behavior and the plea bargaining process.
last updated January 2024