Publications
Friends Don't Let Friends Drop Out with Adam Wright and John Krieg. forthcoming, Education Economics, 2023. Link to ungated version
Abstract: We combine administrative data from a regional public university with a novel revealed-preference indicator of student friendships to show that socially connected first-year university students are more likely to be retained into their second year. The impact of friends on retention is statistically and economically significant: each friend raises the probability of retention by about 0.6 percentage points, an effect size roughly equivalent to 66 SAT points. This effect occurs in the presence of a robust set of explanatory variables, including unique indicators of a student’s prior commitment to the university, and applies to wide variety of student subgroups.
The Minimum Wage in a Roy Model with Monopsony. Journal of Labor Research, 2021, Vol. 42: 358-381. Link to ungated version
Abstract: I propose and estimate a structural model of the labor market that features agents who are heterogeneous in both productivity and reservation wages, and a monopsony employer bound by the minimum wage. I examine the consequences of alternative minimum wage regimes. My results indicate that under a $15 federal minimum wage, at least 1.58 million lower-skilled women aged between 24 and 55 who worked for less than $15 per hour in 2017 would lose their jobs and be involuntarily excluded from labor market participation. The remaining 11.21 million would see their wage rise to the new minimum. The $15 minimum would also encourage an additional 2.74 million women to enter the labor force.
Social Networks and College Performance: Evidence from Dining Data with Adam Wright and John Krieg. Economics of Education Review, 2020, Vol. 79. Link to ungated version
Abstract: We investigate the effect of friends in class on academic performance in college using unique data on dining card swipes at a medium-sized public university. We define friendships by academic quarter as repeated meetings among students in the same dining hall. To identify the impact of having a friend in class, we employ models with student- and class-level fixed effects and find having a friend in class has large and positive effects on grades. Our analysis of heterogeneous friend effects reveals that the positive friend effect exists across all types of friend characteristics, suggesting the unconditional importance of social connections.
Does a High Minimum Wage Spur Low-Skilled Emigration? with Ali Termos. Economics Letters, 2015, Vol. 137: 200-202. Link to ungated version
Abstract: We investigate the migration response to state and local variation in minimum wages in the United States. We find that a one dollar difference between two areas’ real minimum wage is associated with 3.1% more migration of low-skilled workers towards the location with the lower minimum wage. The minimum wage does not influence the migration decisions of high-skilled workers.
Changes in Relative Ability as a Determinant of the U.S. College Premium with Yongli Zhang. Review of Economic Analysis, 2015, Vol. 7: 84-110. Link to ungated version
Abstract: We develop a macroeconomic framework to estimate the importance of fluctuations in relative ability in accounting for trends in the college premium in the United States since 1965. The theoretical scaffolding is a heterogeneous agent model with two dimensions of ability and endogenous schooling choice, with exogenous skill-biased technological change (SBTC), college tuition, and non-economic social forces. We find that an increase in the social and economic forces that promote college attendance reduce the relative mean ability of college educated workers. We attribute the drop in the college premium over the 1970s to a 25.5% drop in the mean relative quality of college educated workers from 1968 to 1977. We find that SBTC explains about two thirds of the increase in college attendance since 1965, and that absent both supply shifts and a supply response to SBTC, the relative wage of highly educated workers would have been 77.1% larger in 2013.
Asymmetric Information and Conversion Price Reset Policy with Yongli Zhang and Junfeng Qiu. Journal of Economic Asymmetries, 2015, Vol. 12(2): 133-141. Link to ungated version
Abstract: This paper studies the a firm's decision to reset the conversion price of convertible debt when the manager has asymmetric private information. Reset provisions are present uniquely in East Asian issues of convertible debt, and in practice allow a firm's management to lower the conversion price. We develop a signalling model which a conversion price reset conveys unfavorable private information about the firm. This is because a firm will reset only if it cannot afford debt repayment. We conduct an event study with data on equity prices of Chinese convertible bond issuing firms. We argue that conversion price resets exhibit negative announcement effects.
Dollarization and Money Demand Stability in Bolivia with Casto Martin Montero Kuscevic. Economics and Business Letters 2015, Vol. 4(3): 116-121. Link to ungated version
Abstract: This paper investigates the long-run money demand stability in Bolivia over the period 1990-2014 using a variety of estimators, namely, dynamic OLS, fully modified OLS, and canonical co-integrating regressions. Our results are robust and reveal that long-run money demand in-stability has been reversed even with persistent inflation volatility. We also show that de-dollarization is associated with money demand stabilization.