Research

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Book Entries

Working Papers

The Impact of Food Assistance Work Requirements on Labor Market and Health Outcomes. (draft available on request)

Abstract: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly named the Food Stamp Program, has long been an integral part of the US social safety net. During US welfare reforms in the mid-1990s, SNAP eligibility became more restrictive with legislation citing a need to improve self-sufficiency of participating households. One of these eligibility requirements is the Able-Bodied Adult Without Dependents (ABAWD) work requirement, which limits the number of months an unemployed adult can receive SNAP benefits. Using restricted-access SNAP microdata from nine states, I exploit age and geographic cutoffs of the ABAWD work requirement, as well as the General Work Requirement (GWR), to estimate the effect of this policy on labor outcomes in addition to select health outcomes such as hospitalizations and mortality. I find that at the ABAWD age cutoff, there is no statistically significant evidence of a discontinuity across static and dynamic employment outcomes. At the GWR age cutoff, unemployed SNAP users and SNAP-eligible adults are on average more likely to leave the labor force than to continue to search for work. I explore the potential for heterogeneous effects across age, race, gender, state, and rurality.

Open Payments and Opioid Overdose Mortalities in the United States. (draft available on request)

Abstract: The United States registered over 190 opioid overdose deaths per day in 2020. Many factors contribute to the epidemic, but a pronounced feature is overprescribing of opioid analgesics. I explore the legal marketing of medical technologies via provider payments and its potential effect on mortality rates. Using the Open Payments database from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and cause of death data from the CDC, I examine the relationship between population-weighted opioid-associated payments and overdose deaths at the county level for the contiguous US. The presence and magnitude of payments varies across counties and regions. Results indicate that opioid producers predominantly advertise through food and entertainment related transfers with median values of around $17. Additionally, I found no statistically significant evidence of "detailing" behavior. Regression results suggest that the number of physicians receiving a payment in a county at an earlier period has a stronger association to opioid-mortalities than the aggregate value of the transfers in the county. 

Keene, T., Mack, E. A., Loveridge, S., Kowalkowski, B., & Gollnow, M. Business Activity in Tribal Areas during the Self-Determination & Nation-to-Nation Eras: Parametric and Semi-Parametric Approaches. (draft available on request)


Papers in Progress

Intrahousehold Bargaining and Diet Quality Education Programs for Children: Evidence from SNAP Households

Abstract: I evaluate whether households that receive food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) exhibit collective bargaining habits in their food expenditures through demand estimation. I then use these results to inform the crux of this chapter: whether direct education programs conducted in schools through SNAP-Ed, SNAP's health living arm, improve the health outcomes of children and their families. I hypothesize that intrahousehold bargaining is the main mechanism through which dietary changes can occur after a child receives SNAP-Ed programming. Using SNAP-Ed's federal eligibility guidelines based on a school's free and reduced lunch student participation, I estimate reduced-form local average treatment effects (LATE) and intention-to-treat (ITT) effects on health outcomes, such as food security, hospitalizations, and mortality of members of the household.