Highlighted Publications




 

Gupta, Mittal, and Van Nieuwerburgh (2022) examine how the shift to remote work has affected the value of commercial office real estate. They ask whether work-from-home practices have permanently reduced office demand, rents, and building values. They analyze lease-level data from CompStak covering 105 U.S. office markets from 2000–2023, combined with office occupancy data, firm remote-work policies, and REIT returns. They find that remote work caused large declines in lease

Bloom, Dahl, and Rooth (2025) examine whether the post-pandemic rise in working from home causally increased employment for people with physical disabilities. They ask whether expanded access to remote work explains the sharp increase in disability employment after COVID-19. They use U.S. Current Population Survey data from 2018–2019 and 2022–2024, combined with occupation-level measures of work from home. They find that a 1 percentage point increase in work from home raises

Dahl and Knepper (2025) examine why workplace sexual harassment is frequently underreported and whether fear of employer retaliation plays a central role. They use administrative data on sexual harassment charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1995 to 2016, combined with county-level unemployment data and major reductions in unemployment insurance benefits, especially in North Carolina. They find that weaker labor market conditions discourage repo

Federle et al. (2025) ask how wars affect economies in the country where fighting occurs and in nearby or connected countries. They assemble a new 150-year, 60-country dataset containing macroeconomic indicators and war casualty data. They find that an average-intensity war causes output in the war-site economy to fall by about 10 percent, consumer prices to rise roughly 20 percent, and capital stock and productivity to decline. They also show that countries trading with the

Baker, Halberstam, Kroft, Mas, and Messacar (2025) ask whether faculty unionization changes the distribution of wages in Canadian higher education. They analyze longitudinal administrative salary data from 1970–2022 and link it to the staggered rollout of faculty unions. They find that unionization raises wages at the bottom of the distribution by roughly 10 percent while leaving top salaries unchanged, compressing inequality. On average, salaries rise about 2 percent in the

Pathania and Netessine (2026) ask whether opening Amazon distribution facilities increases local economic well-being. They examine county-level data from 2011–2019, including employment-to-population ratios, poverty rates, and median household income, and they use midsized counties as treatment cases. They combine matching with Callaway–Sant’Anna difference-in-differences to address selection and staggered treatment. They find that after Amazon enters a county, the employment

Fadlon, Fugleholm, and Nielsen (2025) ask whether income losses after a spouse’s death worsen survivors’ mental health. They use Danish administrative data from 1995–2018, including death records, prescription drug purchases, and household income information for the full population. They find that survivors sharply increase their use of mental-health medications after the death, with take-up doubling in the first month (about +10.5 percentage points) and remaining about 10 pe

Benson, Li, and Shue (2025) study whether subjective “potential” ratings help explain why women are promoted less often than men. They use personnel data from 29,809 management-track employees in a large North American retail firm and track performance, potential ratings, promotions, and turnover. They find that women receive higher performance ratings but lower potential ratings, and that potential ratings predict promotions more strongly than performance ratings. Difference

Carpenter, Feir, Pendakur, and Warman (2025) examine whether nonbinary and transgender people experience earnings penalties compared to cisgender workers, and what explains those gaps. They use restricted 2021 Canadian Census data linked to tax records, covering earnings from 2019–2020 for adults ages 25–59. They find large earnings disparities relative to cisgender men. Nonbinary people assigned female at birth earn about 44–49 percent less in basic models and about 27 perce

Ager, Goni, and Salvanes (2024) study whether gender-biased technological change—specifically the adoption of milking machines—pushed young rural women out of farming and improved their long-term economic outcomes. They use linked Norwegian administrative registry data covering about 725,000 women and men born in rural municipalities, combined with municipality-level agricultural census data on milking machine adoption. They find that milking machines displaced young women fr

Uzzi et al. (2025) examine whether neighborhood conditions shaped by past redlining and present-day racialized economic segregation are associated with fatal opioid overdose deaths. They analyze census-tract–level data from Chicago, combining Cook County Medical Examiner overdose records with historical redlining maps and contemporary census data from 2017–2019 and 2020–2022. They find that neighborhoods experiencing high levels of disadvantage in the past and/or present had

Zhong (2024) asks whether third-grade test-based retention improves or harms students’ long-term outcomes. He examines administrative data from Texas public schools linked to college enrollment records and state earnings data, following students from third grade into their mid-20s. Using a regression discontinuity design around the reading test promotion cutoff, he finds that retention briefly raises test scores but increases absenteeism, violent behavior, and juvenile crime.

Hankins, Momeni, and Sovich (2025) ask whether trade tariffs raise consumer borrowing costs by changing auto loan terms, not just vehicle prices. They examine millions of U.S. auto loans from Regulation AB II data, comparing loans from captive auto lenders (owned by manufacturers) to non-captive lenders before and after the 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs. They find that captive lenders increased interest rates by about 26 basis points after the tariffs, roughly a 10 percent

Cunningham and Gillezeau (2025) ask whether granting collective bargaining rights to police unions increases civilian deaths caused by law enforcement. They analyze county-level data from 1959–1988, combining historical records on police bargaining laws with Vital Statistics data on deaths due to legal intervention, disaggregated by race. Using an event-study design, they find that the adoption of “duty to bargain” laws leads to a substantial increase in civilian deaths over

Schneider and Harknett (2026) examine whether state and local paid sick leave laws affect workers who are not legally covered through spillovers within large, multi-state firms. They ask whether firm-level exposure to paid sick leave mandates leads companies to extend paid sick leave to workers in non-mandate locations. They analyze linked employer–employee survey data from the Shift Project, combined with administrative data on firm locations and mandate coverage. They find

The study asks which neighborhoods in the United States give children the best chances of rising out of poverty. Using Census and IRS data on more than 20 million children born between 1978 and 1983, the researchers link childhood Census tracts to adult outcomes such as income, incarceration, and teen birth rates. They find large neighborhood gaps: for children from families earning $27,000, adult household income differs by about $12,850 across nearby tracts. Quasi-experimen

This study asks whether sending people who commit financial crimes to prison reduces future offending and whether these sentences also discourage their coworkers from committing similar crimes. The authors use detailed administrative data from Finland, linking court records, workplace information, and criminal histories. Using random assignment of judges to identify causal effects, they find that a prison sentence reduces a defendant’s likelihood of reoffending by about 43 pe

The study asks whether countries that are more connected to global financial markets recover more quickly from natural disasters. The authors use quarterly data from 61 advanced and emerging economies between 1970 and 2018, including detailed information on floods, storms, earthquakes, and other sudden disasters. They compare economic outcomes—GDP, consumption, and investment—between countries with high versus low levels of cross-border financial assets and liabilities. They

The study asks whether immigration increases local innovation and wage growth in U.S. counties. Using census, ACS, patent records, and wage data from 1975–2010, the authors link immigration shocks to changes in patenting and earnings. They find that an influx of 10,000 immigrants raises patenting by about 1.22 patents per 100,000 residents over five years (a 25 percent increase) and boosts annual wages by roughly $150 per capita (about 8 percent higher wage growth). More educ

This study asks whether changes in state NAEP math scores predict long-term economic and social outcomes for the students who experienced them. The authors link state-level 8th-grade NAEP math results from 1990–2019 to later-life data from the Census, American Community Survey, and FBI crime records. They find that a one–standard deviation increase in 8th-grade math scores is associated with about an 8% rise in adult earnings, higher educational attainment, and lower rates of