Working Papers

Cities across the United States are facing a housing shortage. Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) offer a unique development strategy to fill low-density residential zones. How-

ever, remarkably little is known about the topic. This paper examines ADUs in Los Angeles to discover what housing and location factors contribute to homeowners’

decision to construct an ADU. The analysis finds that larger homes on lots with higher land value – though not necessarily larger lots – tend to encourage more ADU construction.

The paper then investigates the effect of an ADU on property value. An instrumental variable approach is used by exploiting a Califorinia law that removed several barriers

to ADU permits. Results suggest that addition of an ADU increases the property value of a parcel by about 50%.

-- Job Market Paper


This paper studies the effect of a government shutdown on air travel. The event of a government shutdown creates a negative demand shock for airlines as government

employees no longer travel for work and citizens cannot visit government sites for either work or recreational purposes. This analysis attempts to estimate the effect of this

demand shock on traffic as well as the responding fare changes. Evidence suggests that, for every percent of the labor force in endpoint cities attributed to federal employees,

carriers lose about 35 passengers per month on non-stop flight segments, and fares are found to be $3.11 lower on average in quarters where shutdowns occur.

-- Under Review at Journal of Air Transport Management

Published Papers

This paper analyzes the flight-frequency choices of a monopoly airline serving a hub-and-spoke network with asymmetric demands. In the 3-city hub-and-spoke network,

demand is allowed to differ across markets. Analysis is done separately for two distinct passenger types: those who assign zero cost to layovers, and those who assign a very

high cost. Both cases result in a higher flight frequency on the higher-demand spoke. Using a simulation, the flight-frequency choices for the two models are compared, and

results show that the difference between the flight-frequency choices on the high and low demand spokes is smaller in the high-cost-layover case than in the zero-cost case.

-- Published in Economics of Transportation, 2020