Research
Peer-reviewed articles, working papers, policy reports, and thesis research, grouped by research agenda.
Each card is labeled peer-reviewed, working paper, policy report, or thesis research, and lists every coauthor. The full list of reports and analyses is on the Policy page, essays and commentary are on the Writing page, and replication code is on the Code page.
Research strands: Work, wages, and labor-market institutions · The safety net, poverty, and mobility · Place-based policy and housing · Earlier research
Work, wages, and labor-market institutions
Minimum wages, gig and nonstandard work, noncompete agreements, remote work, wage-subsidy design, and how the typical American worker is faring.
- PEER-REVIEWED · 2023
The Minimum Wage, Self-Employment, and the Online Gig Economy
Minimum-wage increases pushed some workers into gig and nonemployer self-employment, concentrated in transportation and warehousing after ride-hailing platforms emerged.
- POLICY REPORT · 2025
How to end low-wage work forever: An 80-80 wage subsidy proposal
The 80-80 proposal would subsidize low-wage paychecks directly, raising take-home pay without adding to employers’ cost of hiring.
- POLICY REPORT · 2024
The American Worker Project: Toward a New Consensus
American workers are more prosperous than prior generations by most measures, but the pace of improvement has slowed, and public perception often lags the underlying data.
- POLICY REPORT · 2023
Full vs. Hybrid: Examining the Consequences of How Americans Work Remotely
Full-remote work raises long-distance migration and destination-market housing prices, while hybrid work enables shorter moves without the same price effect.
- POLICY REPORT · 2023
The Effects of Noncompete Agreement Reforms on Business Formation: A Comparison of Hawaii and Oregon
Hawaii’s noncompete exemption for technology workers was associated with 10 percent more technology establishments, while Oregon’s broader low-wage-worker reform showed no significant effect.
- DISSERTATION · 2021
The Impact of Public Policy on Nonstandard Work Arrangements
Doctoral dissertation on how public policy shapes nonstandard work arrangements, completed at the University of Washington.
The safety net, poverty, and mobility
How the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, liquid savings, and government transfers shape work, well-being, hardship, and the intergenerational persistence of poverty.
- PEER-REVIEWED · 2024
Effects of the expanded Child Tax Credit on employment outcomes
The expanded Child Tax Credit’s monthly payments reduced poverty and hardship without reducing parental employment or labor force participation.
- PEER-REVIEWED · 2022
No Evidence the Child Tax Credit Expansion Had an Effect on the Well-Being and Mental Health of Parents
The expanded Child Tax Credit showed no measurable short-term effect on parents’ life satisfaction, anxiety, or depression symptoms.
- WORKING PAPER · 2025
The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty
The EITC improves children’s long-run pre-tax economic circumstances but does not reduce the relative intergenerational persistence of poverty or any persistence measure based on post-tax income.
- WORKING PAPER · 2023
The Effectiveness of the Food Stamp Program at Reducing Racial Differences in the Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty
Childhood access to the Food Stamp Program reduced adult poverty by five percentage points overall, with a nine-point reduction in deep poverty for Black adults whose parents lacked a high school education.
- POLICY REPORT · 2024
The Great "Transfer"-mation: How American Communities Became Reliant on Income from Government
Government transfers grew from 8 percent of personal income in 1970 to almost 18 percent by 2022, leaving roughly half of U.S. counties substantially reliant on transfer income.
- POLICY REPORT · 2023
Liquid Assets, Financial Shocks, and Entrances into Material Hardship
New Yorkers with $2,000 in liquid assets are substantially less likely to fall into material hardship after a financial shock than those with none, and the protective effect levels off above that amount.
Place-based policy and housing
Opportunity Zones and the geography of investment and housing supply.
- POLICY REPORT · 2025
The Impact of Opportunity Zones on Housing Supply
Opportunity Zone designation increased new housing construction by 70 percent in designated tracts, adding more than 416,000 residential addresses with little displacement from nearby areas.
- POLICY REPORT · 2023
Are Opportunity Zones Working? What the Literature Tells Us
Studies that wait long enough to observe Opportunity Zones under fully finalized regulations find the strongest positive investment effects; many widely cited early studies end their analysis window too soon to detect them.
Earlier research
Undergraduate thesis research on structural change and political reform in China.
- SENIOR THESIS · 2016
The Chinese Hukou System: Structural Change and Political Reform
Undergraduate senior thesis on structural change and political reform in China’s hukou household-registration system.