Welcome to My Website

I am a Ph.D. in Economics. I will be joining Penn State University as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Fall 2025. My research focuses on macroeconomics, public economics, and labor economics.

Education

Ph.D. in Economics, 2025, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN

Contact:  Email: akil0002@umn.edu  Address: 1925 South 4th Street, 4-101 Hanson Hall, Minneapolis, MN 55455 

Research

1- Remote Work: Implications for Optimal Income Taxation  (Job Market Paper)

This paper studies optimal income taxation in the context of remote work. The choice of workplace is modeled analogously to a decision between "two islands," incorporating heterogeneity in workplace preferences and productivity losses associated with working from home (WFH). Optimal income taxation is examined using Ramsey taxation, both with and without WFH. The main result shows that incorporating WFH reduces the optimal marginal income tax rate. This reduction is quantitatively significant and robust across alternative specifications. Optimal marginal tax rates are about 2% to 3% lower for low-income groups and about 5% lower for high-income groups when WFH is considered in the Ramsey problem. With an additional income of $10,000, the optimal policy with WFH reduces the tax burden by $280 to $520 at income levels between $40,000 and $500,000, compared to the policy without WFH.

2- Understanding the Selection Effect of WFH: Evidence from Survey Data

3- WFH and Housing Expenditure: Selection or Preference?  (with Aleksandr Shneider)

This paper estimates the differential in housing expenditures among households based on workplace type—work-from-home (WFH) versus onsite—using data from the American Community Survey (ACS). We show that the observed premium in housing expenditures for WFH households is not necessarily linked to preference. Using a partial equilibrium model, we show that selection into WFH may explain this premium in housing consumption among remote workers. Analyzing disparities in housing expenditures between urban and rural areas in the post-COVID-19 period, we uncover a notable trend: while the selection effect remains evident both before and after COVID-19 in urban areas—with the primary locus of WFH selection entering wage statistics—the housing expenditure premium in urban areas has declined since the pandemic, contrasting with trends observed in rural areas and in pre-2019 urban data.