Welcome to my website! I am a postdoctoral researcher in economics at Purdue University. My research focuses on Urban Economics, Spatial Economics, International Trade and Applied Microeconomics. My current projects use structural models and reduced-form methods to explore topics related to the labor market, including (1) productivity externalities and optimal policies, (2) globalization and CEO compensation, and (3) student-university matching and human capital production.

Working Papers

Productivity Externalities of Working from Home: Welfare and Policy Implications [PDF]
I study the socially optimal mix of onsite work and remote work. I develop a model in which workers choose how much to work onsite versus from home, without internalizing the productivity spillovers that occur within both onsite and remote workers. The model predicts that the social optimum favors the work mode with stronger spillover, and that a smaller gap between onsite and remote spillovers brings the market equilibrium closer to the social optimum. I measure these spillovers using post-pandemic U.S. survey data at the city-sector-work mode level. Matching the model to these data, I find that a social planner could, on average, improve social welfare by encouraging more onsite work. Remote productivity spillovers lower the cost of achieving the social optimum.

Using Global Shocks to Understand the Level and Structure of Executive Compensation（with David Hummels, and Jakob R. Munch） [PDF]
We build a model of CEO compensation in which trade shocks interact with CEO effort. The model predicts that trade shocks change CEO compensation through scale, volatility, and ability-magnification channels. Using Danish matched worker-firm data, we find empirical support for these channels: (1) Exogenous shocks to trade increase the size and value of the firm and CEO compensation; (2) the share of firm value paid to the CEO is increasing in the size and value of the firm and increasing in the volatility induced by global shocks; (3) Higher-ability CEOs generate increases in firm value that are more than 100 times greater than their compensation, through a combination of mitigating losses and maximizing the return to positive shocks.

Work in Progress

The Production of Human Capital in A System of Universities (with David Hummels)
We build a general equilibrium model to answer the following questions: (1) How do shocks—such as increasing manufacturing wages and technological changes—affect the number and quality of colleges and the distribution of human capital in society? (2) How do changes in borrowing costs affect intergenerational human capital formation? The model features matching between heterogeneous students and universities. Students receive higher human capital from a good match between their ability and university quality.