Curriculum vitae
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Last updated: October 31, 2024
Ph.D. candidate
Vancouver School of Economics
University of British Columbia
FIELDS OF SPECIALIZATION
Public Finance, Urban Economics, Economics of Education
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Economics – Vancouver School of Economics (UBC) – Expected May 2025
- Dissertation: Essays in Applied Economics and Policy Evaluation
M.A., Economics – California State University, Sacramento – 2017
- Thesis: Gains from Migration and Marriage: The Final Years of the Great Migration, 1965-1970
B.A., Film Studies – Columbia College (Columbia University) – 2006
- Thesis: Spike Lee’s 25th Hour: An Analysis of September 11 Themes
CURRENT RESEARCH ACTIVITY
Job market paper
Who Benefits from Local Bond Elections? Evidence from California’s School Bond Reform
Research supported by the Lincoln Institute C. Lowell Harriss Fellowship.
I evaluate the consequences of a significant 2001 reform that increased California school districts’ fiscal autonomy. I document the reform’s differential impact on school facilities investment across districts and provide new evidence on the spatial sorting consequences of such investments. Using the reform as a natural experiment, I identify effects on public spending, household sorting, housing markets, and academic outcomes. Between 2001 and 2017, affected districts increased their annual capital spending per student by 60 percent compared to the previous decade, boosting their capital stock by the equivalent of three additional years of average capital spending. The effects of this spending shock on equal access to high-quality facilities and on household decisions hold important implications for proposed school district and local government borrowing policies in several states.
Work in progress
State Transfers for Bond-Financed Capital Spending in California School Districts: Corrective Allocation and Implications for Municipalities
I estimate optimal state transfers to local governments, examining how intergovernmental grants interact with local capital spending decisions and mitigate cross-jurisdictional externalities. Using variation in school facility grants, I provide evidence on transfer program design and derive implications for state policy toward municipal infrastructure and housing projects.
Private Insurer Exit and State-Provided Homeowners Insurance: Impacts on Households and Housing Markets in Fire-Prone States
Using household-level data and a dynamic regression discontinuity design across state boundaries, I study how state-sponsored homeowners insurance plans affect housing values and household sorting in regions where private insurers exit due to escalating climate risk.
Social insurance non-compliance in China: A synthesis and new results (with Wei Cui and Jeffrey Hicks).
PUBLICATIONS
Journal articles
How well-targeted are payroll tax cuts as a response to COVID-19? Evidence from China (with Wei Cui and Jeffrey Hicks). International Tax and Public Finance 29(5), 2022.
Edited volumes
Contributions to the World Happiness Report:
(From 2020 through 2023, I contributed to Chapter 2 of the annual *World Happiness Report,* co-authoring with John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang, and Shun Wang.)
World Happiness, Trust, and Social Connections in Times of Crisis (also with Len Goff). 2023.
Happiness, Benevolence, and Trust during COVID-19 and Beyond. 2022.
Happiness, Trust, and Deaths under COVID-19. 2021.
Social Environments for World Happiness. 2020.
Happiness at different ages: The social context matters (with John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang and Shun Wang). In The Economics of Happiness, ed. M. Rojas. Springer, 2019. Also NBER Working Paper No. 25121.
Other articles
Retired working paper: Well-being analysis favours a virus-elimination strategy for COVID-19 (with John F. Helliwell, Shun Wang, Lara B. Aknin, and Haifang Huang). NBER Working Paper 29092, August 2021.
Pre-doctoral: “Managing grapevine trunk diseases in California’s Southern San Joaquin Valley” (with Kendra Baumgartner, Vicken Hillis, Mark Lubell, and Jonathan Kaplan). American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, 70(3), 2019.
RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIPS
John F. Helliwell, Vancouver School of Economics, UBC, Sept 2017 - present
Wei Cui, Allard School of Law, UBC, Jan 2020 - Dec 2020
Munir Squires, Vancouver School of Economics, UBC, Oct 2019 - Sept 2020
Jonathan Kaplan, CSU Sacramento, Sept 2015 - May 2017
TEACHING TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE
Training at the UBC Centre for the Integration of Teaching, Research and Learning
Foundations of Pedagogy, Sept - Nov 2022
Graduate Online Instructional Skills Workshop, Jan - Feb 2021
Teaching assistantships
Research Design and Policy Evaluation in Economics (Masters/Ph.D. level), 2024
Economics of Labor Markets (4th year undergraduate), 2024
Economics of Public Expenditures (4th year undergraduate), 2021
Introduction to International Trade (3rd year undergraduate), 2019
Principles of Microeconomics (1st year undergraduate), 2019
FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS, AND GRANTS
C. Lowell Harriss Dissertation Fellowship, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2024
UBC Centre for Innovative Data in Economics Research (CIDER) Small Grant ($13,115 for data acquisition), 2023
Fellowship in Happiness Economics, UBC, 2018-2023
Four-Year Doctoral Fellowship, UBC, 2017-2021
SSIS Dean’s Award, CSU Sacramento, 2017
Robert and Chi-Ming Dana Curry Scholarship in Economics, CSU Sacramento, 2016
CONFERENCES AND INVITED MEETINGS
WHY Symposium on Policy Evaluation and Causal Inference 2024 (planned)
Southern Economic Association Annual Meeting, 2021, 2024 (planned)
UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate Summer Symposium, 2024
International Institute of Public Finance Annual Congress 2021, 2023
NBER Business Taxation in a Federal System Meeting, 2020*, 2021*, 2022*
Urban Economics Association 2022 Summer School*
NBER Graduate Student Workshop on Business Income Taxation, 2020*
*Non-presenting invitee
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Referee for Journal of Public Economics, European Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Happiness Studies, International Journal of Wellbeing
Editorial advisor, Global Happiness and Well-being Policy Report, 2019, 2022
Graduate Studies Committee Representative, Vancouver School of Economics, 2019-2020
PARTICULAR SKILLS
Statistical software: R, Stata
Spatial analysis: R (sf), ArcGIS
Machine learning: Random forests, gradient boosting, neural networks, experiment tracking
Computing infrastructure: Cloud deployment, high-performance computing
Programming & development: Python, SQL, Git, continuous integration
Languages: English (native), Spanish (advanced/C1)