I study the origins of inequality and how individual preferences and beliefs shape life trajectories across generations. My research focuses on understanding how early-life environments influence the formation of economic and political preferences, skills, and beliefs, and how these individual characteristics affect educational attainment, labor market success, health, and political behavior over the life cycle.

To answer these questions, I combine long-run field experiments, administrative and panel data, behavioral measurement, structural modeling, and modern microeconometric methods. A central goal of my research is to understand to what extent individual life trajectories, and ultimately persistent inequalities within societies, can be changed through targeted interventions and changes in the social environment.

Most of my current research projects fall into one or more of the following domains:

• Formation of economic and political preferences, skills, and human capital under unequal environments

• Long-run effects of childhood interventions on educational, labor market, and social inequality

• The development of political preferences, redistribution attitudes, and populist beliefs in response to economic inequality