Working Papers

The Economic Costs of Compulsory Military Service 
Joint with Mohammad Hoseini     [ Manuscript ]  [New draft coming soon.]

Abstract. Compulsory military service remains widespread in many developing countries, yet its long-term consequences for human capital and earnings are not well understood. We develop a dynamic discrete choice model of schooling and career decisions to study the effect of conscription in Iran. The model replicates observed life-cycle patterns in the data and is validated using quasi-experimental variation from a temporary exemption reform. Conscription substantially reduces annual earnings in early adulthood, but the penalty narrows over the life-cycle. Counterfactual experiments suggest that the forgone labor market experience and low pay during service are the main mechanisms. Although compulsory service raises educational attainment, it does not translate into higher earnings, as those induced to study longer enter occupations where returns to education are limited.
We use GPU parallel programming in Julia to solve the dynamic discrete choice model in the paper. In case you're interested, older version of the code is available [here]

Dual Earners without Childcare: Intergenerational Impacts and Policy-Sequencing Lessons
Joint with Arash Nekoei and Josef Sigurdsson [New draft coming soon.]

Abstract. A growing share of children are raised in dual-earner families. Yet childcare provision has not kept pace. We study the long-run consequences for children using Sweden’s 1971 transition from joint to individual taxation. The reform sharply reduced tax rates for secondary earners and increased married women’s employment, but preceded the large-scale expansion of public childcare. Combining cross-family variation in reform-induced tax changes with within-family variation in siblings’ ages, we find that exposure to working parents during childhood reduced cognitive and non-cognitive skills, educational attainment, and adult earnings. Exposed children also reflect more gender-egalitarian norms in their marital and parental choices. The human-capital losses, which also persisted in the third generation, are not inherent; they are concentrated in regions with scarce childcare. The findings point to a policy-sequencing lesson: expanding parental employment without first providing childcare can come at an intergenerational cost.

Estimating Inequality with Missing Top Incomes: A Nonparametric Framework Integrating Auxiliary Data
Joint with Zahra Shamlou, Mohammad Hoseini, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani   [Manuscript]  [Submitted.]

Abstract. We propose a framework for estimating the income distribution when household surveys miss top incomes using auxiliary datasets that allow for nonparametric and machine-learning-based prediction of top incomes. In particular, traditional parametric approaches such as Pareto-tail fitting or the direct use of tax registries appear as special cases of this framework. Identification hinges on a coverage condition requiring that the auxiliary data include the households in the upper tail of the income distribution. We apply the method to estimating income inequality in Iran, combining household surveys with newly available administrative data on real estate transactions. Our estimates reveal that inequality is substantially higher than previously reported: the income share of the top one percent rises from about five to nine percent in some years, and the Gini coefficient increases by roughly five points. Moreover, we show that the coverage assumption fails for tax registries because high-income individuals are often absent from the tax base, a limitation that likely extends to many countries without comprehensive or effectively enforced tax systems.