Ji Hye Choi

Welcome! I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at Rutgers University. My research lies at the intersection of labor, family, and gender economics.  My dissertation studies how intrahousehold bargaining reshapes behavior both inside and outside the home.

My job market paper, Household Bargaining and Desistance from Crime, studies why and how people stop crime through the lens of household bargaining. Using Bartik‑style gendered labor market demand shocks to proxy for female partners' bargaining power,  I show that partnership per se does very little; what matters is who the partner is.

In my applied theory work, Voice Before Exit, I use game theory to show that female empowerment programs can temporarily raise domestic conflict: women gain enough resources to voice previously suppressed grievances, but not yet enough to make their partners concede.