RESEARCH
The Price of Representation: Congressional Redistricting and Housing Markets Job Market Paper
Abstract : This paper provides the first causal evidence that congressional redistricting affects residential property values and housing market activity, showing that political representation is capitalized as an amenity in housing markets. Exploiting the 2022 redistricting in Harris County, Texas as a quasi-natural experiment, I compare 1.43 million properties whose congressional district assignment changed with those whose assignment remained stable, using annual data from 2017 to 2025. While average treatment effects are modest, substantial heterogeneity emerges along two dimensions. Properties that experience a partisan flip in district control exhibit a 4.7% decline in market values and a 0.48 percentage point increase in deed transfer probability, consistent with political misalignment imposing disutility on residents. By contrast, properties reassigned to more electorally competitive districts experience a 4.9% increase in assessed values and higher transaction rates, suggesting that electoral accountability is valued as a local amenity. These findings remain robust to syntheticdifference-in-differences estimation, which addresses pre-existing differential trends in assessed valuesbetween treated and control properties. Together, the results show that political geography shapesurban economic outcomes through non-pecuniary channels, independent of schools, taxes, and localpublic services, and that gerrymandering can impose real economic costs on households by reducing competitive representation and disrupting partisan alignment.
Presentations:DePaul University Research Symposium (2026)
Bias in Knowledge Production : Causal Evidence from Editor Rotations (with Tom Chang and David Solomon)
Abstract : This paper provides causal evidence on how editorial ideology influences the production anddirection of scholarly discourse. Using machine learning applied to 60,000 economics and finance articles published between 1957 and 2013, we construct novel measures of political ideology for both papers andeditorial boards. We find that conservative and liberal editorial boards tend to publish papers that align with their ideological orientation, with associations large enough to suggest systematic editorial gatekeeping. However, these relationships disappear when we compare papers published within the same journal across different editorial regimes. This null result challenges accounts of active editorial filtering and instead points to powerful sorting mechanisms in academic markets. Different journals appear to serve ideologically distinct scholarly communities, with authors strategically targeting outlets that match their ideological approach. At the same time, extreme editorial transitions increase the probability of publishing ideologically extreme papers by 4.5 percentage points, or 43%, suggesting that editors can influence the boundaries of acceptable discourse. In addition, papers that are ideologically distant from their handling editors receive significantly fewer citations. Together, these findings suggestthat ideological patterns in academic publishing arise primarily through institutional sorting rather than routine editorial gatekeeping, with important implications for understanding how scientific communitiesorganize knowledge.
Presentations: Center for Economic and Social Research – USC Dornsife (2025), USC PhD Minicon-ference (2024)
Judicial Anti-Corporation Bias and Firm Outcomes: Evidence from Federal District Courts
Abstract : This study examines how judicial ideology shapes firm outcomes in federal district court cases, with implications for corporate litigation risk and financial decision-making. Using a novel dataset of judicial opinions from 22 federal district courts and leveraging the random assignment of cases tojudges, I construct a measure of judicial anti-corporation bias and examine both its determinants and its consequences. I find that judges appointed by Democratic presidents are more likely to rule against firms than judges appointed by Republican presidents, and that this relationship is moderated by the political controversy surrounding a judge’s appointment. Using a machine learning model trained on case facts, I further show that judges with higher anti-corporation bias generate significantly larger settlement and penalty amounts than would be predicted based on case merits alone. In contrast, I find no evidence that judges’ personal financial circumstances affect their tendency to rule against corporations. Together, these results highlight the important role of judicial ideology in shaping corporate legal outcomes beyond what can be explained by case facts, with implications for litigation strategy, firm risk management,and the broader intersection of law and finance.
Presentations: USC PhD Miniconference (2024)
WORKS IN PROGRESS
[1] “Political Uncertainty and Corporate Behavior: Evidence from California’s Ballot Proposition System” (with John Matsusaka)
[2] “Partisan Sorting in Physical Space: Evidence from Inventor Relocation and Patent Production” (with Florenta Teodoridis, Joseph Raffiee, Jino Lu, and Daniel Fehder)
[3] “The Politics of the IMF” (with Dean Ryu)
PRE-DOCTORAL PUBLICATIONS
Abnormal Trading Volume, News and Market Efficiency: Evidence from the Jamaica Stock Exchange (with Steve Swidler) Research in International Business and Finance 64: 101804
Abstract : This paper investigates the market efficiency of the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE). Together, weak and semi-strong form market efficiency claim that historical and newly released public information do not predict future stock price movement. We test both forms of market efficiency by analyzing stock price behavior during times of abnormal trading volume and around the release dates of earnings information. Abnormal trading volume may be driven by liquidity demand or reflect new or private information flow to the market. Using data from the Jamaica Stock Exchange over the period 2000 to 2021, we find price dynamics consistent with price pressure as firms experience negative abnormal returns on the day of abnormal trading activity but offsetting positive abnormal stock returns on the following day. Further findings show post earnings announcement drift on the JSE. Taken as a whole, the evidence suggests violations of market efficiency and has implications for capital allocation in this emerging market