Research

Publications

(Forthcoming in The Review of Economics and Statistics) Online Appendix

I examine the economic consequences of prisons on local communities using two complementary approaches. The first uses prison openings during the 1990s across the US and the second exploits the results of the prison site-selection competitions in Texas. Prisons bring substantial and persistent gains in public employment. However, additional jobs at the prisons generate little spillover effects on private sector employment and fail to provide a major boost to local economic activity – overall resulting in approximately a one-for-one increase in local employment. Neighborhoods closest to prisons also experience declines in housing values and demographic shifts towards low-socioeconomic status households.

The Mortality Effects of Winter Heating Prices, with Seema Jayachandran and Pinchuan Ong

The Economic Journal, 2024. Previously circulated as "Inexpensive Heating Reduces Winter Mortality" (NBER Working Paper).

This paper examines how the price of home heating affects mortality in the US. Exposure to cold is one reason that mortality peaks in winter, and a higher heating price increases exposure to cold by reducing heating use. Our empirical approach combines spatial variation in the energy source used for home heating and temporal variation in the national prices of natural gas and electricity. We find that a lower heating price reduces winter mortality, driven mostly by cardiovascular and respiratory causes. Our estimates imply that the 42% drop in the natural gas price in the late 2000s, mostly driven by the shale gas boom, averted 12,500 deaths per year in the US. The effect appears to be especially large in high-poverty communities.

The Economic Effects of Prison Closures on Local Communities

Economics Letters, July 2023, Volume 228, 111155

This study examines the economic impacts of prison closures on local communities in the United States during the early 2010s. Using a difference-in-differences design, my analyses reveal a significant reduction in public-sector employment and a greater impact on low-skilled workers. However, I find little evidence of an adverse spillover effect on private-sector employment. Consequently, the overall implications of prison closures on the broader labor and housing markets are modest.

Working Papers

Wages, taxes, and labor supply elasticities: The role of social preferences, with Pinchuan Ong

Works in progress

My current projects investigate issues relating to labor supply elasticities, affordable housing problems, and gender differences in career progression. Happy to chat more!

Other Papers

The stimulus effect of the 2008 UK Temporary VAT Cut, with Thomas F. Crossley, Melanie Lührmann, and Cormac O’Dea,

Proceeding of the 102nd Annual Conference on Taxation, National Tax Association, 2011.