Presented at: (Scheduled) ASSA Conference 2027; (Scheduled) SEA Conference 2026; NYSEA Conference 2025; 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: 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: Taiwan Economics Research Workshop 2026; 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: This project attempts to understand reasons leading to workers' persistence earnings losses following a job displacement, and the heterogeneity in such losses in different macroeconomic conditions. We propose a novel channel, namely, coworker networks, through which we may explain the permanent worse recovery of workers displaced during a recession. The shrink in one's effective networks and the increased reliance on networks for job search during busts are two mechanisms through which coworker networks may play a role in the differential earnings recovery. Using the Brazilian matched employer-employee data, we explore the cyclicality of displacement costs, as well as the role of coworker networks in displaced workers' long-term recovery. We aim at understanding the role of network in job search and labor market outcomes of displaced workers, and accounting for the differences in the recovery paths of workers displaced in booms versus in busts.
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.