Research
Job Market Paper
This paper evaluates a cash-plus-job-training program using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design. The program targeted economically vulnerable young adults in Los Angeles County: 60 percent of participants were unhoused or housing-unstable at baseline, and their average annual income was less than $7,000. Individuals assigned to treatment received an unconditional cash transfer of $1,000 per month for three years and the option to participate in a structured job-training program. From nearly 2,000 eligible applicants, 300 individuals were randomly selected for treatment and 566 for control. Using six rounds of surveys and administrative data, I find sizable improvements: food, housing, and financial security indices increase by 0.2–0.3 standard deviations (SD); psychological well-being improves by 0.18 SD on the Kessler-6 scale; childbearing declines by nearly half; and felony arrests decline by 40 percent. Labor market outcomes improve substantially – employment rises by 7 percentage points (18 percent increase), monthly earnings increase by roughly $94 per month (30 percent increase), and job satisfaction rises by 0.21 SD. Instrumental variables estimates exploiting random assignment to caseworkers indicate that job training, conditional on cash, accounted for much of the program’s overall impact, raising employment by 19 percentage points and monthly earnings by $240.
This project has been registered with the AEA RCT Registry under the RCT ID AEARCTR-0011791. The pre-analysis plan can be found here.
Selected Works in Progress
Stockpiling Under Political Uncertainty: Evidence from Ammunition Sales (with Yiren Ding and Camille Wixon)
In this project, we examine how political discourse and regulatory expectations influence consumer behavior in the firearm ammunition market. Building on the insight that ammunition (unlike firearms) is a single-use, perishable good, the project isolates stockpiling responses among existing and new gun owners in anticipation of stricter gun laws. We use high-frequency data on ammunition purchases from Los Angeles County. Exploiting political shocks such as major elections and legislative debates, we test how variation in the intensity and timing of politicians’ gun-control rhetoric drives spikes in demand. To interpret these behavioral responses, we are developing a dynamic model of stockpiling behavior inspired by Hendel and Nevo (2006), in which consumers make intertemporal purchasing decisions under evolving policy expectations and storage costs.
Publications
Incentive Pay and Decision Quality: Evidence from NCAA Football Coaches (with Luke Taylor)
Applied Economics (2022), 54(30), pp. 3505-3520.
Using play-by-play American football data and panel data on head coach remuneration, we test whether a head coach’s incentive pay affects the quality of their decisions. We proceed by first estimating an ‘optimal strategy’ for first-down offensive plays, then investigate whether the gap between actual and optimal choices is affected by incentive pay. In contrast to merely looking at the outcome of an agent’s choice, our approach considers the decision environment and the resources available. We find a small, but significant, negative effect of incentive pay on decision quality. Critically, this effect is not found when looking at raw outcome measures.