Research

An unintended effect of school entrance age: pushing children ahead through private school. Journal Population Economics (2025), 38, 5.

The Effect of Spouses’ Relative Education on Household Time Allocation. Southern Economic Journal (2023), 89(3), 788-829.

The Skills of Rich and Poor Country Workers, with David Slichter and Daniela Monge (under review)

What specific types of skills – e.g., scientific knowledge, math, or social skills – do workers raised in rich countries have that workers from poor countries lack? We investigate using information on occupation choices of immigrants. To an approximation, rich country workers are better at exactly those skills which are well-compensated in the U.S. economy, and in proportion to how well-compensated those skills are. Specifically, this means that rich country workers have the greatest advantages in skills related to the ability to generate new ideas (e.g., creativity and critical thinking), and that rich country workers’ skills align especially closely with the skills used in management occupations. Lastly, we find that workers from rich countries are more varied in their skills (e.g., what one Canadian is good at is different from what another Canadian is). These findings do not appear to be accounted for by the non-randomness of immigration or mismeasurement of skills. Our results are consistent with the view that international differences in skills arise primarily in response to differences in demand for skills.

Female Politicians and Corruption in Rural India, with Somdeep Chatterjee and Shiv Hastawala (under review)

This paper exploits random assignment of female quotas for leadership positions on Indian village councils to assess its causal effect on corruption. Since the mid-1990s, India has mandated that one third of village council chief positions be randomly reserved for women. Using data from the Rural Economic and Demographic Survey (REDS) 2006, we find that an additional term reserved for a female head as opposed to just a single one reduces both the occurrence and amount of bribes paid to the local government by households. This reduction is also observed in bribes paid to other local officials suggesting downstream effects of electing female officials on corruption. As a potential mechanism, we provide speculative evidence that it takes time for women political leaders to establish and settle, and when they are able to do so, they appear more efficient and transparent, especially in terms of selecting households as beneficiaries for government programs.

The Effect of Fertility on Women’s Labor Supply: Heterogeneity by Gender Norms

This paper examines whether fertility's effect on women's labor supply is influenced by gender norms. To separate the role of gender norms from institutional features, I analyze the labor supply responses to childbearing among women in the United States, contrasting those born domestically with those born abroad. This includes a comparison between native and immigrant women, and further, among immigrants, between those from less and more gender-egalitarian countries. The variable of interest, having more than two children, is instrumented using the sex composition of the first two children. The findings indicate that women from all countries experience a reduction in employment in response to having more than two children. Moreover, the instrumental analysis reveals this effect to be quantitatively larger for women from less gender-egalitarian countries. Consequently, the results suggest that the negative effect of fertility on employment decreases with increased gender egalitarianism.

Impact of Government Job Age Cut-off on Labor Market Outcomes of College Graduates (with Md Shahadath Hossain)

We use a regression discontinuity design to examine the impact of the government job age cutoff on the labor market outcomes of college graduates in Bangladesh. Our findings indicate that individuals just above the age cutoff are significantly more likely (8.4 percentage points) to be employed, while working similar hours per week and earning similar salaries. These results suggest that the age cutoff policy prolongs unemployment, thus reducing work experience. Exploring potential channels, we find that employment arise due to the increased likelihood of engaging in unpaid family work, working in high-skilled industries, and employment in small firms. Therefore, although government jobs can offer a substantial premium to those who can secure them, the age restriction policy has broader negative implications that might outweigh its benefits.

The Marriage Market Composition and the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States (with Xin Liang and Leila Salarpour Goodarzi)

Draft comming soon

• “The Accent Gap” (with Ozlem Tonguc, Maria Zhu and Nicola Miller)

• “The Effect of Countries’ Technology and Productivity on Human Capital” (with David Slichter)

• “The Income-Amenities Occupation Trade-off: What Workers Gain When They Give up Wages?” (with David Slichter)

• “Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital Investment” (with Md Shahadath Hossain)

• “Odd Work Schedule on Well-Being“ (with Xi Mao)