Working Papers
I study how parents perceive the uncertainty of the returns to investment in the child development process and how this uncertainty impacts their actual investment in children. To do so, I develop an elicitation procedure of parental subjective belief distributions about the technology of skill production and their subjective investment costs that is guided by a model of parental investment. I collect data using this procedure and extend existing measurement error correction methods that are necessary with belief estimation. I show that parents hold downward-biased mean beliefs about the returns to investment. Moreover, parents who have higher mean beliefs also hold lower levels of uncertainty about their beliefs. Both mean beliefs and uncertainty correlate with actual investment measures. Finally, I estimate a model of parental investment with reference-dependent preferences and show that even though parents hold low mean beliefs, they have a strong incentive to invest if their child is at risk of experiencing a developmental delay.
One Says Goodbye, Another Says Hello: Turnover and Compensation in the Early Care and Education Sector - with Flavio Cunha; [NBER Working Paper 31869]; Submitted
The quality of the early environment children experience profoundly influences their human capital development. We investigate retention and compensation of the Early Care and Education workforce by merging datasets from three different government agencies in Texas. We construct a longitudinal panel of individuals born between 1980 and 1989. We study their educational background and their lifecycle labor market dynamics. Turnover in the ECE sector is 37% higher and earnings are 12% to 20% below those in the sectors that employ similar types of workers. We uncover steep educational and racial differences in turnover rates and earnings. We estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of schooling and work decisions for a sample of potential entrants of the ECE sector. We estimate an extensive labor supply elasticity of 2 but a turnover elasticity of -0.5. Our model predicts that entry and retention bonuses would have a small positive impact on recruitment and retention in the ECE industry.
An Equilibrium Model of School Teacher Wages and School Financing, with Aloisio Araujo, Gabriel Sallum [Draft available upon request]
School funding equalization is a common policy in the United States that redistributes revenue from property-rich school districts to property-poor ones. This paper examines the impact of the Texas school funding equalizatio policy, known as Recapture, on teacher wages and skill composition using a structural equilibrium model. We first use a policy change in 2019 that changed school funding formulas in Texas to understand how school districts allocate new revenue between payroll and other administrative functions. We find that about 20% of new revenue is put into payroll mainly via wage increases. The other 80% goes towards bureaucracy functions like consulting, contracting and legal services. We then build and estimate an equilibrium model of teacher and non-teacher labor supply and school district budget allocation informed by our reduced form evidence. Counterfactual simulations reveal that eliminating the recapture policy allows wealthier districts to offer higher wages and attract more teachers but may lower average teacher quality due to an influx of less-skilled individuals. Less affluent districts face budget reductions and reduced teaching resources but could experience an increase in average teaching quality. Our findings highlight important trade-offs in policy design regarding funding redistribution and educational equity.
Work in Progress
Mental Health and Human Capital Formation in Children; Data cleaning in progress
This project uses a Brazilian longitudinal dataset that follows families identified as at risk of depression over ten years. The data include detailed measures of parental and child mental health, genetics, socioeconomic background, and child outcomes. I study how depression in parents and children affects the process of human capital formation by estimating a skill production function that incorporates mental health as an input. I also examine whether income support programs, such as cash transfers, influence the relationship between mental health and child development.
Fertility Preferences Across Countries: Evidence from a Unified Structural Model, with Steven Lehrer and Jin Young Yoon; Data assembly in progress
This project estimates a unified dynamic model of fertility and labor supply preferences across six countries. By applying a consistent structural framework, we compare how differences in fertility preferences contribute to cross-country variation in observed fertility behavior and the decline in fertility rates in developed economies. Our approach allows us to separate the role of underlying preferences from policy and institutional factors, providing a clearer picture of how and why fertility choices differ across contexts.
Sibling Spillovers in Childcare Subsidies, with Weili Ding, Michael Kottelenberg, Steven Lehrer; Analysis in progress
This project studies sibling spillovers in response to a universal childcare subsidy in Quebec. The staggered rollout of eligibility by child age allows us to compare households with both eligible and ineligible children. We investigate whether the policy generated indirect effects on ineligible siblings through changes in family resource allocation, parental investment, and subsequent human capital outcomes. This approach provides new evidence on the broader household-level impacts of childcare subsidies beyond the directly treated child.
Policy Briefs
Identifying Impact in the Context of Recovery: TWC Child Care Business Coaching Program, Texas Policy Lab (2022)
Wage Supplementation Policies in Texas, Texas Policy Lab (2023)