Job Market Paper
The Effect of Salary History Bans on Labor Market Reattachment
Intended to reduce wage disparities and promote equity in hiring, Salary History Bans (SHBs) prohibit employers from inquiring about job applicants' current or previous salaries during the hiring process. I first develop a search and matching model showing that information frictions introduced by SHBs lengthen unemployment duration and generate higher reemployment wages for workers who voluntarily reveal their past salaries, while non-revealers earn lower wages. Then, I examine the impact of these bans on unemployment duration, weekly earnings, and job transitions among displaced workers by employing a difference-in-differences approach that leverages the staggered implementation of SHBs across states. The empirical analysis shows that these policies increase unemployment duration by approximately 19 percent and reduce the probability of full-time employment by 4.8 percentage points, with both effects driven by impacts among women. I also find a negative and statistically significant effect on women's wages, widening the gender pay gap by 12.5 percent. Using machine learning to construct market wage benchmarks, I further show that SHBs lead to substantial reemployment wage penalties for previously low-paid women. These findings highlight the potential effects of SHBs on gender equity in the labor market and job-matching efficiency.
Working Paper
The Collateral Channel of Renovation Loans (with Yeonjoo Son)
(Draft available upon request)
This paper quantifies the causal effect of collateral-driven house price shocks on renovation lending. To address endogeneity in local prices, we instrument MSA-level house prices using the interaction of national mortgage rates with land supply elasticity. We then scale these shocks by pre-determined baseline collateral capacity, generating quasi-experimental variation in pledgeable housing wealth. Our results indicate that housing wealth has a significant positive impact on renovation credit, with price appreciation leading to a notably larger increase in lending in regions where households face tighter initial collateral constraints. While these effects are present across the full sample of loan applications, the impact is most pronounced among originated loans, suggesting that house price appreciation primarily facilitates the realized volume of credit. These findings provide new evidence on how housing equity supports household investment and underscores the central role of collateral in the transmission of housing wealth shocks to the real economy.
Work in progress
Does Training Provide Evidence on Asymmetric Employer Learning?
(Draft available upon request)
A worker’s productivity may not be perfectly known to employers at the beginning of the hiring process. Over time, however, a current employer may acquire more precise information about the worker’s productivity than outside employers. Using both public and restricted-use NLSY79 and NLSY97 datasets, I test for asymmetric employer learning by examining workers’ human-capital investment decisions. Building on a microeconomic framework of employer learning and training, the study analyzes how information frictions influence workers’ training decisions and wage growth, and how ability sorting shapes job mobility, combining theoretical modeling with empirical evidence.
Indirect Effects of Recession on the Future Graduating Class