Origin country conflict and immigrant physical health (with Ryan A. Compton, Dörte Heger, and Karl Skogstad)
Defence and Peace Economics, 2025.
Abstract: Using multiple waves of Statistics Canada’s Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) linked with the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB), as well as the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP)/International Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) Armed Conflict Dataset, we examine the effect of exposure to pre-migration conflict on the post-migration physical health outcomes of immigrants to Canada. To incorporate self-assessed health and diagnosed chronic conditions, we create an index of physical health using principal component analysis. Our results demonstrate that immigrants from conflict zones face physical health challenges that continue post-migration. Better understanding these challenges will help health policy makers and providers to better respond to the needs of people migrating from these regions of the world.
Distributional and Housing Price Effects from Public Transit Investment: Evidence from Vancouver (with Alex Chernoff)
International Economic Review, 63(1), 475-509, 2022.
Abstract: We estimate a residential sorting model using microdata to study an expansion of the Vancouver rapid transit network. Our results indicate that many aspects of household preferences were stable over time; however, preferences for transit access became more homogeneous with respect to income. Simulations show that these preference changes, along with endogenous housing appreciation and rising income levels in connected neighborhoods, result in larger benefits for higher-income households. This distributional pattern is driven by the gains of households working in pre-connected neighborhoods. In contrast, the benefits to those working in newly connected neighborhoods disproportionately favor lower-income households.
Academia or the Private Sector? Sorting of Agents into Institutions and an Outside Sector (with Marie-Louise Vierø)
The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics (Contributions) 13, 303-345, 2013. (working paper version)
Abstract: This article develops an equilibrium sorting model with utility maximizing agents (researchers) on one side of the market, and on the other side institutions (universities) and an outside sector. Researchers are assumed to care about peer effects, their relative status within universities, and salary compensation. They differ in their concern for salary compensation as well as in their ability. We derive the unique stable equilibrium allocation of researchers and investigate the effects on the academic sector of changes in the outside option as well as the interaction between the outside option and the researchers’ concern for relative status. In any equilibrium, the right-hand side of the ability distribution is allocated to the academic sector, while the left-hand side of the ability distribution is allocated to the outside sector, with possible overlap between sectors and within the academic sector. The universities’ qualities are determined endogenously, and we show that an increase in the value of the outside option decreases the difference in quality between the higher and lower ranked universities. Furthermore, differences in average salaries between the institutions arise endogenously.
Commute Mode and Residential Location Choice
Abstract: Public transportation infrastructure projects are major government investments that potentially affect not only travel mode choices, but residential location. To analyze the impacts of public transportation projects, accounting for households' residential location decisions, I develop a discrete choice model of commute mode and residential location. In this model, households have heterogeneous preferences for neighbourhood characteristics and commute costs. I estimate this model using microdata from Vancouver and commute times calculated with geographic information system (GIS) data. The mean-income household's willingness to pay to reduce commute time is fourteen dollars per hour and there is significant heterogeneity in this value across household income. Using the estimated model, I simulate households' residential and commute mode decisions under a proposed public transportation infrastructure project.