Works in Progress

"Beneficiaries at the Margin: Voter Turnout and State Education Budgets"

Abstract: Education spending is a form of collective provision whose political support depends on who participates in the electorate. This paper examines two opposing mechanisms linking participation to spending using state education budgets. Under demand amplification, broader turnout is expected to increase the share of beneficiaries in the electorate and raise political support for spending. In contrast, interest-group dilution suggests organized beneficiaries possess more influence when turnout is low, with relative influence weakening as participation broadens. To examine these competing theories, I construct a state-year measure of the share of voting-age adults living with school-age children and interact it with voter turnout in a two-way fixed-effects model covering 2012 to 2022. The interaction is negative in every specification, and higher turnout is associated with a smaller education budget share at average exposure. The estimates are imprecise, but the results favor interest-group dilution and are difficult to reconcile with demand amplification. More generally, the fiscal effect of turnout depends on the interests that participation brings into the political process.

"Religious Networks and Economic Opportunity: Evidence from U.S. Counties" 

(with Dr. Jamie Bologna-Pavlik, Texas Tech University)

Abstract: This paper examines how large, sustained changes in religious adherence affect county-level income. We find that counties experiencing substantial increases in adherence realize significantly higher net income per capita over the following two decades, while counties with large declines in adherence move in the opposite direction. The effect is delayed, emerging only over the longer horizon. This pattern is consistent with congregational networks improving the flow of information and the matching of workers to jobs. These findings contrast with the mixed associations reported in much of the existing county-level literature. More broadly, they show that religious congregations function as part of the institutional infrastructure of local economies, shaping economic performance through relationships and coordination.

"Against Curricular Adjudication: A Response to Rochon and Rossi"

Abstract: Rochon and Rossi (2026) argue that neoclassical economics should no longer be taught to undergraduates because its foundations are flawed and its empirical record is weak. I grant several of their empirical criticisms and reject the pedagogical conclusion they draw from them. A macroeconomic framework earns classroom consideration when economists still disagree about it and when it offers explanations of important economic episodes that students can evaluate against historical evidence. It does not have to have been judged correct. Where those disagreements remain open, removing one side from the curriculum transfers adjudication from the student to the instructor. That same logic applies to heterodox frameworks when economists are still arguing over them. Rochon and Rossi's proposal also sits in tension with their call for a more empirical economics education, since empirical reasoning requires competing explanations against which evidence can be interpreted. 

"The Great Escape: A Classroom Activity for Teaching OLS"

Abstract: This paper describes an active learning activity for teaching ordinary least squares in an undergraduate econometrics course. In my experience, students often grasp what to do without really understanding why OLS works the way it does. In this activity, students choose an escape path across a prison courtyard, minimizing the sum of squared distances from "guard towers" in the room. This simple, fun activity gets students involved in a physical scenario with meaningful minimization consequences. I describe the activity design and what instructors need to conduct it, in the hope that others find it useful in their own classrooms. 

"Teaching Economic Reasoning Through Integrated Assignments"

Abstract: This paper describes an assignment structure in which students build an economic argument from evidence they produce themselves. The structure joins a question, a data task, a substantive reading, course concepts, and analytical questions moving from description to mechanism, evaluation, and a defended conclusion. The components are built so the final judgment requires all of them, and a removal test checks that dependency. Assignments from a principles of macroeconomics course illustrate it, and one is reproduced in full with the common rubric. The paper covers construction, grading, adaptation to other courses, and the conditions under which the design fails.