I am an assistant professor of economics and the John Stewart Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am an applied microeconomist with a background in theory and labor. My CV is available here.
My research agenda focuses on how human resource decisions within firms shape markets, but this is more of a common thread than a rule. I believe an idea is worth pursuing if it feels like magic and truth at the same time.
NEWS: My paper “The Inner Beauty of Firms” was awarded the Oliver Williamson Best Conference Paper Award by the Society of Institutional and Organizational Economics.
PhD in Economics, 2023
UCLA
MA in Economics, 2020
UCLA
BA in Economics & Political Science, 2016
UCLA
Firms increasingly rely on recruiters to find talent. Recruiters are typically paid using refund contracts, which specify a payment upon a successful candidate suggestion and hire, and a refund if a candidate is hired but leaves for any reason during an initial period of employment.
Using millions of task assignments from salon management software, I find significant establishment-level dispersion in labor productivity and internal task specialization and a strong association between the two that is unexplained by establishment size.
Asset forfeiture is the seizure of property that is believed to be connected to criminal activity, typically the sale of illicit drugs. Despite the dismantling of the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, the legalization of marijuana, and legislative reform the value of assets seized in California has not decreased.
This paper’s contribution is to explicitly model how finite sequences of tasks are assigned to a finite set of workers by a manager who must take into account internal communication. In most task-based models, it is assumed that time can be allocated smoothly.
In this paper we demonstrate tips are sensitive to service quality even when future interaction is unlikely. Using a novel data set covering 150,000 hair salon appointments where customers can be observed over time, we are able to exploit variation in service quality and exogenous separation rates.
Notes on Monotone Comparative Statics Notes on Hamiltonians Notes on Continuous Action Moral Hazard Notes on Common Value Auctions Notes on Multitasking with Harmful Effort
An app that uses volunteer preferences to match volunteers to tasks.