Research 

(Job Market Paper) Race, Poverty, and the Changing American Suburbs (with Jacob Fabian)

We study the relationship between Black suburbanization and the changing socioeconomic composition of the suburbs. We build a model of segregation and income sorting that demonstrates how the departure of wealthy White residents from suburban areas that Black families enter can increase suburban poverty. Empirically, we construct a shift-share instrument for changes in the Black share of Northern suburbs based on population flows from the Great Migration and the distance from urban Black neighborhoods to the suburbs. Our results at the metropolitan-area level indicate that rich and college-educated non-Black residents become less likely to live in the suburbs, while impoverished (non-Black) residents become more likely to live in the suburbs, as a result of Black suburbanization. We find evidence of a process of neighborhood change in which suburban home prices fall as Black families move in, inducing lower-income residents to move into the suburbs and disproportionately increasing Black suburban residents' exposure to poverty. Using a new instrument to analyze these mechanisms within metropolitan areas yields similar results. Our findings provide another example of how destination responses impede Black Americans’ ability to move to opportunity.

Draft available here.

(The Great) Migration and those Left Behind (with Gabrielle Grafton)

We study the economic impact that out-migration imposes on those who remain behind and do not migrate, focusing on Black Americans who remained in the South during the Great Migration. We build a shift-share instrument for the net Black out-migration rate using shocks to manufacturing employment in Northern cities. We address selection into migration using newly-available longitudinal Census data that allows us to analyze changes in outcomes of non-migrating Black residents. Our results indicate that out-migration increases the income of those who do not migrate. This effect is larger for farm workers, an occupation for which employment in our sample counties decreased dramatically during the 1940s, suggesting that changes in local labor supply are an important mechanism. Our results inform policies to encourage migration away from less-productive areas.

Draft available soon.

Migration and Village India (with Kazuki Motohashi and Shunsuke Tsuda)

This paper examines the effects of rural-urban migration and structural transformation on rural inequality and caste discrimination among those who remain in rural Indian villages. Using country-wide household-level panel data, we find that migration is predominantly driven by landowning households. Employing a shift-share IV design, we find that the practice of untouchability increases, non-agricultural incomes fall, and workers move into agriculture as more people migrate out of the village. We plan to further investigate village-wide impacts of the out-migration, including on the demand for non-tradable services and on the power dynamics between landless workers and landowners. Our findings underscore the unintended socio-economic consequences of rural-urban migration and its role in exacerbating inequality in rural India.

Using Information to Confront Water Pollution in the Mekong Delta (pilot study proposal)

I study whether giving groups of small-scale shrimp farmers in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam access to a tool to measure and share information on water quality will ameliorate the adverse effects of the water pollution on aquaculture production. My pilot study indicates that six out of seven groups of farmers have used these devices to record at least one measurement, with 124 measurements recorded in the first seven weeks. The measurements indicate that salinity levels are frequently outside of the recommended range for growing shrimp. An endline survey in December will investigate how access to the tool changed farmers’ beliefs about water quality levels, and how the farmers used these measurements to adapt to water pollution and unanticipated changes in water quality. My findings may inform strategies to adapt to climate-related environmental pollution.

Nonconforming Preferences: Jumbo Mortgage Lending and Large Bank Stress Tests (with Andrew Haughwout, Donald Morgan, Maxim Pinkovskiy, and Wilbert van der Klaauw)

Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking (2024) 

The 2010s saw a profound shift towards jumbo mortgage lending by large banks that are regulated under the Dodd-Frank Act. Using data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, we show that the “jumbo shift” is correlated with being subject to the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) stress tests, and that financial regulation caused CCAR-regulated banks to change preference for nonconforming relative to conforming loans of similar size. We discuss potential mechanisms through which regulation could have affected bank incentives.

The expected price of keeping up with the Joneses (with Olivier Armantier, Antonio Filippin, and Luca Nunziata)

 Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2022)

Inflation expectations elicited in surveys have been found to exhibit large dispersion across individuals. Although several explanations have been proposed, none fully explain this puzzle. We explore in this paper a new behavioral factor: social comparison. Using original survey data, we find that respondents who feel they are falling behind compared to their peers report significantly and substantially higher inflation expectations. We argue that this result is consistent with an experience based belief formation model in which those unable to “keep up with the Joneses” overweight the high prices of “aspiration” goods they are unable to purchase.

Impact of Second-Parent Migration on Student Academic Performance in Northwest China and its Implications (with Yu Bai, Tong Ru, Yaojiang Shi, Kaleigh Kenny, and Scott Rozelle) 

The Journal of Development Studies (2020)

The migration of hundreds of millions of rural Chinese workers to the city has contributed substantially to China’s economic growth since the beginning of the country’s economic reform in 1978. However, this migration has also led to societal issues, including more than 60 million left-behind children. Empirical studies that seek to measure the impact of being left-behind on academic performance have led to inconsistent results, perhaps because the effects may be different for first-parent migration (migration during the first period of time in which one parent migrates) and second-parent migration (migration when the remaining parent leaves the home). Here we have examined how school performance changes before and after the second parent out-migrates. We use a panel dataset of over 5,000 students from 72 primary schools in rural China. Using a difference-in-difference approach, supported by a placebo test, we find that second-parent migration has statistically significant negative impacts on student performance. Importantly, our data provide convincing evidence that second-parent migration has a more negative impact on academic performance than first-parent migration. Our results have broad implications for China’s future economic growth and inequality.