Job Market Paper: "Household preferences for school bus transportation: Survey Evidence from Wake County, North Carolina"
Abstract: Despite widespread recognition and availability, school bus use across the United States is declining. Starting in 2022, the majority of public schoolchildren do not travel to and from school by bus, but rather by private vehicle. This transition generates private and social costs, such as increasing traffic congestion and additional travel time for parents and guardians. Together, this suggests a disconnect between current school bus service and potential users. To investigate preferences for school transportation, I designed and fielded a survey investigating household preferences for school bus transportation in the Wake County Public School System, the largest school district in North Carolina. By collecting both revealed and stated preference data, I identify trade-offs respondents are willing to make between travel time and delays or cancellations of school bus service. On average, respondents would trade more than one hour of student travel time to avoid a delay or cancellation of service. Leveraging double-bounded dichotomous choice information, I find that survey respondents value their students' travel time at a rate of $24 per hour. Additionally, respondents would be willing to pay $18.35 to avoid a delay or cancellation of school bus service. To my knowledge, these are the first willingness to pay estimates related to school transportation.
Publications
"Mental health symptoms among U.S. College Students before, early, and late into the Covid-19 pandemic: a longitudinal analysis" (with Jane Cooley Fruehwirth, Lu Huang, and Krista Perreria), Journal of Adolescent Health, Volume 76, Issue 2, February 2025 . Link
Works in Progress
"Geographic variation of school transportation preferences in the Southeastern United States"
"Swimming against the crowd: congestion effects in beach demand and valuation" (with Andrew Earle, Frank Lupi, and Roger von Haefen)
"School choice with indifferent student preferences" (with Umut Dur)
Prior Work
"What the Frack? An Analysis of the Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing on the Public Education System In North Dakota" (Undergraduate Honors Thesis)
Abstract: The technological innovations in the late 2000’s enabled once non-viable oil and natural gas deposits to suddenly become lucrative through a new technique: hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking. The Bakken Formation, one of the largest oil and gas formations in the United States, lies underneath North Dakota. As a result of drilling improvements, oil and gas companies began creating operations in North Dakota to access the Formation, generating jobs and enticing relocation to the area. The resulting local economic boom presents a unique opportunity to study the effects of fracking booms on the public school system. By exploiting the homogeneity of North Dakota, I employ a difference in differences model to estimate the causal impact exposure to fracking has on the public school system at a county level via property tax revenues, enrollments, number of full time equivalent teachers, instructional salaries, and outlay for construction and instructional equipment. I find that for counties with high exposure to fracking there is an average increase in property tax revenues by 29.5%, an increase in primary enrollment by 25.44 students, and an average decrease of 3.665 primary full time equivalent teachers. Counties with low exposure to fracking see a 26.1% increase in property tax revenue, and though the coefficients are similar, there is no significant effect on primary enrollment or teacher numbers.