Research
Publications and Forthcoming Papers
The Labor Market Impacts of Fair Work Legislation (Accepted at ILRR)
The Impact of Job Loss on Parental Time Investment, 2023, Research in Labor Economics.
Personal Belief Exemptions for School-Entry Vaccinations, Vaccination Rates, and Academic Achievement, 2021, Journal of Health Economics. Joint with Carly Urban and Nicole Hair.
Pneumococcal Vaccination Mandates for Child Care: Impact of State Laws on Vaccination Coverage at 19-35 Months, 2021, American Journal of Preventative Medicine. Joint with Carly Urban and Nicole Hair.
Working Papers
Much of the observed gender wage gap can be explained by differences in the types of jobs held by men and women. This paper examines the role of family friendly job amenities in women’s job selection by testing whether their career choices respond to job level changes in access to paid maternity leave. State paid family leave (PFL) programs provide almost universal access to paid leave for new mothers and therefore dispro portionately increase access to paid leave in jobs with lower employer-provided leave coverage in the absence of PFL. I test whether state PFL increases the concentration of young women in jobs that prior to the policy change had lower levels of employer provided paid leave. I use data from the Current Population (CPS) and American Community (ACS) surveys to estimate an industry level measure of employer-provided paid leave taking in the absence of policy. I then exploit the implementation of the California (2004), New Jersey (2009), and Rhode Island (2014) state programs to test whether PFL affects the industry group distribution of college educated women age 25-39 using difference-in-differences (DD) and staggered adoption design estimations. I find that PFL led to a quantitatively meaningful flow into jobs with lower levels of employer-provided paid leave taking in the absence of PFL. Treating my job level mea sure of paid leave taking as fixed, the distribution of jobs changed enough to lower the average industry level measure of paid leave by two percent. The effects for women are larger than those for men, which helps rule out alternative explanations such as industry-specific demand shocks. The results indicate that women value paid leave as an amenity, even prior to motherhood.
Soda Taxes, BMI and Obesity: Evidence from Seattle. Joint with James Flynn (Under Review)
The Impact of Wildfires on Internal Migration in the US (Peer Reviewed)
Work In Progress
The Current Shortage of U.S. Workers: Exploring Its Causes and the Impacts of Alternative Policy Responses. Joint with Jeronimo Carballo, Rick Mansfield and James Flynn.