Working Paper
The Vanishing Wage Effect: Immigration, Task Prices, and Endogenous College Major Choice in General Equilibrium. (With Jessie Dickens) [PDF] [SSRN] [Slides] Forthcoming, Boston College Economics PhD Conference, April 2026.
Abstract: We develop and estimate a dynamic general equilibrium model in which forward-looking students choose college majors in response to immigration-induced task price movements. We show that endogenous native reallocation not only offsets but more than fully reverses the partial-equilibrium wage effect of immigration, generating long-run wage responses that differ sharply from static estimates. The overshooting reflects strong cross-task complementarity: immigration-induced price changes propagate through education decisions in ways that amplify the initial wage impact. A leave-one-task-out decomposition attributes this to divergence between interpersonal and IT task prices — a margin that standard cognitive/manual frameworks miss.
Do People Trust Generative AI, and is it Trustworthy? Evidence from Playing Trust Games with ChatGPT (With Jeffrey Livingston and Kobe Rankich). Submitted to the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization [SSRN]
Abstract: In this study, we measure the faith people have in ChatGPT by having people play as the first mover in a trust game with ChatGPT as the recipient. We also measure ChatGPT's trustworthiness by its willingness to return substantial amounts to the sender. We find that people trust ChatGPT to a similar extent as they trust humans: trust that it will behave prosocially when it is instructed to do so, and have too much faith in its prosociality when it is told to act selfishly. We also find that ChatGPT chooses to act prosocially (or selfishly) when instructed to do so.
Work in Progress
Fluctuating Working Hours: Worker Choice, Firm Constraints, and Welfare.
Impact of the Pandemic on Student Effort during Low-Stake Standardized Exams -- Evidence from the PISA Exam (With Jeffrey Livingston)