Academic Research:
"Food Choices at a Client Choice Food Pantry: Do Low-Income Pantry Users Respond to Changed Opportunity Costs?" (with Tammy Leonard, UT Southwestern Medical Center)
Published at Food Policy
Abstract: Client choice food pantries allow individuals, many of whom are food insecure, to select a preferred bundle of food. To date, interventions to improve the nutrition of food choices in pantries have not included price incentive programs like those employed in the retail food sector because pantries do not charge for food. However, economic incentives may still play a role in food pantry choices through choice architecture. We examined a natural experiment involving two client-choice regimes that effectively altered the opportunity cost of food selections. Longitudinal individual fixed effects models provide evidence that pantry clients responded to changed opportunity costs by selecting more foods that became relatively less expensive and fewer foods that became relatively more costly. Our study highlights the impact of choice architecture, and in particular relative trade-offs, on food selections in the food pantry context.
Do Long Term Cash Transfers Improve the Survival of Girls? Evidence from India
Revise and Resubmit at Applied Economics Letters
In response to the prevalence of female feticide, Bihar launched a policy called Mukhyamantri Kanya Suraksha Yojana (MKSY) in 2008. This policy aimed to improve the social status of women and to improve the sex ratio in the state. The policy provided long term cash transfers to two daughters of a family if certain eligibility conditions were satisfied. In this study, I analyze if the policy led to an improvement in the survival rate of the girl child. Results in this study shed light on the effectiveness of the long term cash transfers in improving the status of women in developing countries.
Studying the impact of DACA using a Cross-Sectional Differences in Regression Discontinuity Design
Submitted
This paper introduces a new research design to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) literature. The cross sectional differences in regression discontinuity (DRD) design leverages the multiple eligibility criteria of the DACA policy in a cross-sectional framework and a regression discontinuity context. The cross sectional DRD does not require a time dimension as compared to the other DRD models used in the DACA literature.
POLICY REPORTS:
Launch Louisiana report with an in-depth analysis of the elementary-and-secondary-school-to-college or –career transition (with Truc Bui, Rachel Veron, Stephen Barnes)
INDUSTRY/CONSULTING RESEARCH:
“Revenue Analysis of a Major US retailer: ‘Subs by Tubs’,” (with Robert Peyton Santori and Sonja Hightower) – (This project won the first position at Buxton Co., Fort Worth)
This research analyzed the factors that influence the profits of a major US retail chain called “Subs by Tubs.” After completing the pre-model analysis of cleaning the data set and dealing with missing observations and outliers, several different regression models were estimated using the OLS procedure. The independent variables for the model were chosen using a combination of theory, logic, statistical significance, and model scoring. After the “best” model was selected, predicted sales were calculated for various potential locations. Subsequently, recommendations were given to the Buxton Company regarding the performance of potential future locations and whether or not each potential location was deemed to have a “high revenue potential.”