• "How States' Allowances for Self-Distribution Affect Craft Brewery Output".

Abstract: Craft brewery output exhibits striking differences across U.S. States, where distribution regulations differ and impact the retailing of brewery products. To explore how these regulations affect output, a model of monopolistic competition is developed that controls for different systems of output distribution to consumers. Simulations of the model show how the expected output of breweries in States that allow self-distribution exceeds that of breweries in States that do not allow self-distribution. Depending on the elasticity of substitution and the variance in the marginal cost of self-distribution, average output gains from allowing self-distribution appear not only realistic but expected. The model also importantly provides a theoretical road-map for empirically identifying the impact of self-distribution laws on craft brewery output. Using trade association data from 2009 to 2016, empirical results drawn from a three-stage IV estimator place the average output gain from legal self-distribution at 45%. These results hold-up well to numerous robustness checks.

• "Development and Retention of Human Capital in Large Bureaucracies", (with Ahmed S. Rahman).

Abstract:This paper examines the effects of technical experience on job mobility within large bureaucratic organizations. We develop an on-the-job search model to understand factors leading to job switching under rigid payment systems. Then, using longitudinal data on British and American naval officer careers, we show how bureaucratic skill-bins and subsequently different technical experience and promotion rates influence job switching and retention. Our estimates demonstrate different rates of return to technical experience and a dramatic increase in these returns by the turn of the 20th Century. These findings help us understand how modernizing organizations can become more vulnerable to loss of skilled personnel, and how organizations might optimally respond to such loss.

• "The Deleterious Effects of Fatigue on Final Exam Performance", (with Michael A. Insler)

Abstract: We estimate the causal effects of the timing of final exams and find consistent evidence that students' grades may suffer from fatigue. We review the final exam grades of Naval Academy freshmen students during the fall and spring semesters, controlling for mid-semester grades, SAT scores, and other socio-control variables. Students from 6 different class-year cohorts create a panel dataset with over 39,000 exam grades from more than 7,000 students. Naval Academy freshmen are a useful group to analyze, since they have little say in their course schedules or day-to-day schedules in a given semester. It is also nearly impossible for students to change or reschedule the timing of a final exam, eliminating a potential source of selectivity bias. Final exam schedules are randomized across time. Our results from Ordered Logit specifications indicate a ceteris paribus decrease in final exam grades with each passing day of a final exam block of time. Specifically, each additional day that the final exam period lasts lowers the odds of achieving a better grade by approximately five percent. This result remains robust to numerous specifications and sensitivity checks. Furthermore, exams taken relatively early in the morning exhibit approximately a forty percent drop in the odds of a better grade. Our results also indicate that an extra study day (without any final exams scheduled for all students) improves grades.

• "Technology-skill complementarity in the Royal Navy prior to the Great War", (co-authored with Ahmed S. Rahman).

Abstract: This paper explores if and how the Royal Navy addressed rapid technological change with skilled labor substitution while simultaneously building and expanding the most powerful fleet in the World. We explore how technological changes could be both skill using and skill substituting. This follows from Goldin and Katz (1998) and earlier research we conducted on the U.S. Navy (Glaser and Rahman, 2011). To analyze the question, we construct a unique dataset that contains the names and characteristics of every serving Royal Navy officer and engineer from 1878 to 1914. Our findings suggest that more technically skilled engineers serve on larger and more technologically advanced vessels, while less technically-skilled officers work with more unskilled personnel on less technologically advanced vessels. Moreover our results are similar in size and scope to the aforementioned research presented on the U.S. Navy. Both papers support of an alternative hypothesis to Goldin and Katz (1998).