Welcome.
I am a PhD candidate in Economics at Penn State University. My research focuses on development and spatial economics, with a particular emphasis on migration, labor markets, and informality in Latin America.
You can find my [CV here].
I am on the 2025-2026 Job Market.
Research Interests:
Development Economics, Spatial Economics, Migration, Informality
Email: avd5992@psu.edu
Address: 420 Kern Building,
University Park, PA 16802, USA
When, where, and how quickly? A model of Venezuelan stepwise migration with network effects, credit constraints, and official assistance.
(Job Market Paper) [Click for Draft]
Abstract: This paper studies how liquidity constraints and migrant networks shape the location choices of Venezuelan forced migrants across South America and how assistance policies affect these outcomes. I develop and estimate a dynamic structural model in which migrants make forward-looking location decisions, accumulate assets often in order to finance onward migration, and build destination-specific integration capital that is lost when they relocate. Networks reduce effective migration costs through help offers that arise endogenously from past settlement patterns. I discipline the model using migrant specific microdata and administrative stocks from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. I compare coordinated transport assistance, which enables early moves to high productivity urban centers, to subsistence support provided in congested regions. Coordinated transport assistance is about five times more cost effective in raising migrant welfare because early relocation triggers compounding network effects across cohorts. Delaying the same program sharply reduces its effectiveness because by then migrants are already integrated into lower productivity locations and network ties are already weakened. These findings speak directly to ongoing policy debates: treating Venezuelans as economic migrants rather than refugees has excluded them from coordinated mobility support, resulting in substantial welfare losses and widespread preventable hardship along their migration paths.
Informality and Self-Employment with Directed Search
Abstract: This paper studies how informality and self-employment shape labor market outcomes in a developing economy with search frictions and limited wage job creation. I build a directed search model with occupational choice in the Lucas span-of-control tradition, combining firm heterogeneity with the informality framework of Ulyssea (2018) and a Kaas and Kircher (2015) style environment that allows large firms and endogenous job creation. A key feature is to separate self-employment from informality: all self-employed run one-person informal firms, while informal employer firms with multiple workers choose non-compliance. otential entrepreneurs optimally select entry, size, and formal status. On the worker side, self-employment arises as a fallback to avoid costly and uncertain job search, rather than only as tax evasion. Calibrating the model to the Brazilian urban labor market, I show that full enforcement of formality that shuts down informal employers and taxes all single-worker firms as formal raises output by about 8 percent but reduces welfare by about 3 percent, mainly because higher taxes on self employment push more workers into costly job search, increase unemployment and search costs, and slightly lower wages through weaker outside options. The results highlight that self-employment and informality are distinct endogenous margins respectively shaped by search frictions and enforcement, and help explain why many tax systems grant preferential treatment to very small and self-employed firms.
Formal modeling in economics
with Salvador Candelas | Encyclopedia of Social Measurement, Second Edition (Forthcoming)
Abstract: This chapter provides a critical introduction to formal economic models. It explains how economists use simplified, abstract representations to isolate causal mechanisms, generate testable predictions, and guide policy decisions. While the mathematical formalism and assumptions can seem opaque to outsiders, the logic behind these models is accessible and powerful. We aim to demystify formal models, showing how their transparency, internal consistency, and disciplined abstraction can clarify complex social phenomena. Readers will learn to interpret models thoughtfully, evaluate their assumptions, and engage with them as analytical tools.