Mahya Amani

Non-Compete Agreements in the Investment Advisory Industry (Job Market Paper)

This paper studies how labor mobility constraints affect competition in the US investment advisory industry. In this industry, advisors play a critical role in the attraction and retention of clients. Non-Compete Agreements constrain advisors' movement among firms except for the Broker Protocol members. I develop and estimate a dynamic industry equilibrium model that features firms' strategic decisions on entry, exit, investment, and adoption of the Broker Protocol. Estimation results based on the data from 2011 to 2018 establish the role of the Broker Protocol in changing the market structure and industry markups. Given the structural estimates, I examine the consequences of policies that change the cost of entry and labor mobility for firms.

Heterogeneous Preferences in the Choice of Higher Education

This paper employs a novel approach to estimate applicant preferences with partially observed data from centralized matching mechanisms such as the Gale-Shapley Deferred Acceptance algorithm. In a Monte Carlo analysis, I illustrate the performance of the estimation method in recovering demand parameters. I apply this method to the university admission data from Iran. The dataset contains information on grades, rank-order lists, and admission results of more than 8,000 applicants matched to programs after being ranked in a centralized exam. Estimates of the demand parameters shed light on how disparities in locational preferences of female and male applicants form their choices. Moreover, the results suggest that gender-neutral policies aiming to enhance educational opportunities for applicants from underdeveloped areas can worsen gender disparities in higher education.

Work in Progress