Research

Learning by Hiring New Immigrants in a Frictional Labor Market   (submitted)

Analyzing immigration from Central and Eastern Europe to West Germany, I show that local establishments’ propensity to hire these immigrants correlates with their past hiring outcomes from the group, a pattern not observed for natives. I incorporate this into an equilibrium search model where firms privately experiment with immigrants to learn about the group's productivity. The model interprets immigrant returns to tenure as an outcome of a learning process correcting inaccurate beliefs about the group and revisits the impact of immigration under informational frictions. The calibrated model shows that, while these immigrants have higher average match quality than natives, persistent misperceptions about the group depress early-tenure wages and limit native employment gains.

Dynamic Sin Taxation: Lifetime Welfare Maximization under Naivete   (new draft coming soon)

This paper studies the dynamic taxation of addictive sin goods with long-term health effects in a dynamic setting. While standard models predict a monotonically increasing consumption path for rational consumers, empirical evidence often shows a hump-shaped pattern. I show that this discrepancy can be explained by introducing naive consumers who experience a one-time, unanticipated improvement in their misperception of health harms. I characterize optimal age-dependent sin taxes and show that consumer naivete justifies higher taxes at younger ages. I also derive a closed-form optimal age-independent tax as a weighted average of age-specific optimal taxes and consumption elasticities. Despite being lifetime optimality, the formulation allows quantification using only cross-sectional data.

College Major Seat Allocation, Macro-trends in Occupations, and Youth Labor Market Outcomes in France   (work in progress)

The choice of college major significantly shapes post-graduate labor market outcomes. This paper investigates whether publicly funded higher education institutions adjust major seat allocations in response to changes in youth employment conditions. Using program-level data from a new online application platform for high school graduates, I document minimal fluctuations in seat availability across majors over the past six years.