Research Interests

 Labor Economics, Public Economics, Microeconometrics, Applied Microeconomics, Structural Models, Economic and Social Policy

(Please click here to see details of how much work has been done on each of these projects.)

Job Market Paper

            A Dynamic Analysis of Occupational, Family and Human Capital Accumulation Choices: Classifying Occupations by Non-Wage Work Characteristics.

This paper analyzes the costs associated with combining different family structure and occupational choices. I attempt to estimate the extent to which family friendly non-wage work characteristics (like work-flexibility) and family related tax subsidies (like child tax credits) affect the educational, labor force participation, occupational and family formation choices of individuals. I develop a dynamic structural model in which individuals make choices with regard to schooling, labor force participation, occupation and child birth. I classify occupations by the non-wage characteristics of work flexibility and formal education requirements. Individuals in the model derive non-pecuniary utility from family structure choices and from non-wage characteristics of occupations. Pecuniary utility is derived from wages, spouse’s income and potentially from welfare payments. Individuals are observationally heterogeneous with regard to demographic, geographic, ability and family background measures. I allow for unobserved heterogeneity in ability and in preferences for occupations and fertility. The structural parameters of the model will be used to perform counterfactual experiments to examine the extent to which family and work choices of individuals vary in response to more attractive non-wage work characteristics and in response to child tax credits like EITC and CTC. Non-structural estimates show that having a larger family is associated with a reduction in the probability of choosing high-education, non-flexible occupations relative to high-education, flexible occupations by 6.5 percentage points. Among low-education occupations, having a larger family is associated with a reduction in the probability of being in a non-flexible occupation relative to a flexible one by 2.6 percentage points.  

Working Papers

Analysis of Professional Impact by Gender, with Joanne Cohoon (Science, Technology and Society, University of Virginia) and Joseph Kaye (Nokia Research Center)

Policies for promoting gender-diversity in occupations that are predominantly male require a better understanding of why women are less likely to enter and succeed in such occupations. Using data from computer science and engineering we attempt to empirically analyze gender differences along one dimension of success: professional impact as measured by research citations received. Using information on all publications of the American Computing Machinery, over the years 1985 to 2007, we examine citations received by gender composition of author groups. We find that after controlling for publication title, year in which the paper was published, and number of authors, female only author groups receive fewer citations than mixed-gender and male-only groups. Female-only publications that fall in the top 25% of the publications with regard to citations received get cited as much as publications from other author groups in that subset of observations. Thus the gender gap in professional impact is not significant among high performing scientists. Further we find that, the marginal contribution in terms of the number of additional citations, of a female author added to a group of one male and one female author is statistically insignificant while that of an additional male author is significant. This difference in marginal contribution in citations by gender suggests that there may be a difference in the size of networks of authors by gender.  

Works in Progress

Policy Drivers of the Direction of Innovative Activity: An Examination of Renewable Energy Incentives in Driving Innovation, with Michael Lenox, Mary Margaret Frank (Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia) and Jeffrey York (Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder)

Promotions, Productivity, and Success among Scientists, with Joanne Cohoon (Science, Technology and Society, University of Virginia)