PROJECTS
International Trade
The project on international trade looks at trade policy around the world to better understand how countries engage with each other and the international system. Active papers in this area use the Grossman Helpman (1994) model for protection, the Gravity model (1954) and its variants, and applied techniques to understand the Belt & Road initiative of trading activity.
Rural Community Development
This project focuses on understanding the vibrancy and health of rural communities in middle America. Among the active papers, we use administrative data to look at philanthropy and how it responds to economic shocks at the census tract level.
This project is the most recently launched and papers are under development.
Labor
Active papers in this project look at the impact of increasing company concentration on labor market outcomes as well as the impact of female legislators on labor market and welfare outcomes (poverty, TANF use, etc.). Generally, this project focuses on applied microeconomic methods to understand a variety of labor data using interesting identification techniques to ask questions about particular policies and their impact on job opportunities and well-being outcomes.
Education Economics
This project looks at success rates of students at two-year and four-year institutions. Some innovations this project has added to the literature are the consideration of complex pathways (the types of transfers students seeking baccalaureate diplomas might take) and remedial credits. We show that much of the penalty community college students can be explained by complex pathways. Additionally, we show that remedial credits at four-year colleges are often degree-enhancing while remedial credits at two-year colleges can be barriers to a baccalaureate degree.