Presented at: Taiwan Economics Research Workshop 2025; Student Seminar (University of Rochester) 2024 & 2025.
Abstract: Various factors influence the joint labor supply decisions of married couples. In this project, we document a new empirical fact for the earnings of married men and women: upon marriage, both men and women see a persistent decline in earnings level, conditioning on never having children or having children later. The changes in earnings trends are attributable to a decrease in work hours and an increase in leisure activities post-marriage. Heterogeneous analyses on pre-marriage wealth groups suggest that leisure is increasing in wealth. We use a collective labor supply model to understand the importance of wealth effects of marriage and the complementarity of spouses' leisure hours in determining spousal joint labor supply decisions. Our model estimates suggest strong positive complementarity between spouses' leisure hours for both genders. Decomposition exercises indicate that (1) wealth effects play a key role in labor supply decisions at the extensive margin, (2) leisure drives intensive-margin adjustments, and (3) complementarities in leisure lead to coordination of spouses’ work hours. Our counterfactual analyses suggest that changes in marriage rates affect how aggregate shocks pass through to labor supply, providing macroeconomic implications to economies with declining marriage rates.
Presented at: Asian and Australian Society of Labour Economics Annual Conference (AASLE) 2023; CSWEP Mentoring Workshop 2023; Taiwan Economics Research Workshop 2023 & 2024; Brown Bag Seminar (National Taiwan University) 2023; Student Seminar (University of Rochester) 2023 & 2022
Abstract: Workers displaced in different macroeconomic conditions experience drastically different long-term earnings recovery. However, the cyclicality of the cost associated with displacements is ambiguous -- despite many works finding the much worse recovery for workers displaced into recessions (the ``scarring effect'') in various economies, the cyclicality derived from theoretical predictions depends highly on labor market and worker characteristics. Using the Veneto Worker History data from Italy, this project documents the opposite earnings recovery pattern for displaced workers: those displaced in recessions see a much better earnings recovery compared to their counterparts in non-recessions. This counter-cyclical displacement cost can further be explained by (1) the less likelihood to work and (2) the lower earnings level conditional on working for workers displaced in some non-recessionary years followed by a recession. Descriptive evidence suggest that worker quality varies across the business cycle, and that workers may have engaged in different job search means. Exploring one particular job search means, namely, coworker network, preliminary results suggest that workers displaced in certain non-recessionary years exhibit smaller network size and slower accumulation over time, potentially pointing towards barriers to reemployment and thus leading to lower earnings recovery.
Presented at: CSWEP Mentoring Workshop 2022; Student Seminar (University of Rochester) 2021
Abstract: This paper examines a tax incentive for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan that allows firms to deduct wage payments to young workers (under age 24) from taxable income. The policy was designed to reduce youth unemployment, and can be used once only upon hiring a young worker. Using universal administrative tax data, I find that medium-sized firms hired an additional 1.86 employees on average in response to the policy, of which 1.04 were young workers. At the individual level, 24-year-old workers experienced a 4% increase in annual salary relative to comparable 25-year-old workers. While these findings are consistent in direction with official government reports, they suggest that the policy’s effect is considerably smaller in magnitude. These findings provide policy implications to economies with similar cultural backgrounds and labor market characteristics seeking to address youth unemployment. Future work will explore the policy’s dynamic impacts on labor supply and demand.
Presented at: (Scheduled) ASSA 2026 Annual Meeting; Taiwan Economics Research Workshop 2025; Academia Sinica - National Taiwan University (AS-NTU) Young Economists Workshop 2025; Brown Bag Seminar (National Taiwan University) 2025
Abstract: Using newly linked Taiwanese administrative datasets, including an annual census of dog and cat registrations from 1999 to 2020 matched to complete personal tax records from 2009 to 2020, we revisit the claim that “pets crowd out babies.” We exploit two quasi-experimental price shocks: a childbirth subsidy and large receipt lottery windfalls. These allow us to estimate cross elasticities between childbearing and pet ownership. The results reveal a Marshallian cross elasticity of −1.32: as the effective cost of children falls, pet ownership rises. Combined with income elasticity estimates, we recover a child price elasticity of fertility of −0.21, suggesting that pets and children are complements, not substitutes. Event study evidence reveals dynamic asymmetry. Acquiring a dog sharply increases subsequent births among previously childless adults (a “starter family” effect), while a new baby temporarily depresses further pet acquisitions, likely due to time constraints. Overall, our findings challenge popular narratives and suggest that pet ownership may support, rather than displace, fertility.
Presented at: Brown Bag Seminar (National Taiwan University) 2024; Student Seminar (University of Rochester) 2024
Abstract: Households play a crucial role in absorbing individual earnings risks. Precautionary savings and household members' labor supply help minimize consumption fluctuations following earnings shocks. However, when members' earnings risks are correlated, the effectiveness of households as an insurance mechanism decreases. Do married couples internalize the correlated earnings risks and sort into different sectors to diversify risks? This project attempts to understand whether sector choices can be a means to decrease household earnings risks and whether we observe heterogenous consumption smoothing across households as a result. A rich employer-employee panel allows for observations of individual labor supply, their specific sector choices, and their savings pre- and post-marriage. I explore whether switching sectors contributes to better intra-household risk sharing and consumption smoothing using a discrete choice framework.