Research

Foreign Accents and Employer Beliefs: Experimental Evidence on Hiring Discrimination, with Ozlem Tonguc, Maria Zhu and Nicola Miller (under review; previously presented under the title “The Effects of a Foreign Accent on Hiring Discrimination”)

This study investigates whether employers in an online hiring experiment discriminate against workers with accents that indicate English is not their primary language. We implement a randomized design in which participants acting as employers are assigned to one of two conditions: a treatment in which the worker’s accent is revealed (“Accent Revealed”) or a control in which it is masked (“Accent Blind”). Using incentive-compatible methods, we elicit employers’ beliefs about the productivity of randomly assigned workers across two domains—mathematics and verbal reasoning—based on brief demographic information and audio clips. We find that employers rate accented workers as less capable than non-accented workers in both skills, and this gap persists after they receive a signal about the worker’s true productivity. Employers also exhibit lower willingness to pay for accented workers, particularly in verbal reasoning tasks, even when performance signals are provided.

The Skills of Rich and Poor Country Workers, with David Slichter and Daniela Monge

What specific types of skills – e.g., scientific knowledge, math, or social skills – do workers raised in rich countries have that workers from poor countries lack? We investigate using information on occupation choices of immigrants. To an approximation, rich country workers are better at exactly those skills which are well-compensated in the U.S. economy, and in proportion to how well-compensated those skills are. Specifically, this means that rich country workers have the greatest advantages in skills related to the ability to generate new ideas (e.g., creativity and critical thinking), and that rich country workers’ skills align especially closely with the skills used in management occupations. Lastly, we find that workers from rich countries are more varied in their skills (e.g., what one Canadian is good at is different from what another Canadian is). These findings do not appear to be accounted for by the non-randomness of immigration or mismeasurement of skills. Our results are consistent with the view that international differences in skills arise primarily in response to differences in demand for skills.

The Effect of Fertility on Women’s Labor Supply: Heterogeneity by Gender Norms (revise & resubmit)

This paper examines whether fertility's effect on women's labor supply is influenced by gender norms. To separate the role of gender norms from institutional features, I analyze the labor supply responses to childbearing among women in the United States, contrasting those born domestically with those born abroad. This includes a comparison between native and immigrant women, and further, among immigrants, between those from less and more gender-egalitarian countries. The variable of interest, having more than two children, is instrumented using the sex composition of the first two children. The findings indicate that women from all countries experience a reduction in employment in response to having more than two children. Moreover, the instrumental analysis reveals this effect to be quantitatively larger for women from less gender-egalitarian countries. Consequently, the results suggest that the negative effect of fertility on employment decreases with increased gender egalitarianism.

Lost in the Queue: Government Job Aspirations and Labor Market Outcomes, with Md Shahadath Hossain (under review)

Abstract available upon request

• The Effect of Countries’ Technology and Productivity on Human Capital (with David Slichter)

• The Impact of an Odd Work Schedule on Well-Being (with Xi Mao)

• Better Together: Multi-Generational Households and Families Well-being

• Accent and Leadership Positions (with Ozlem Tonguc and Maria Zhu)

Ideas for India: It takes two (terms) to tango: Female leaders and corruption in rural India, with Somdeep Chatterjee and Shiv Hastawala.

Occupations, Wages and Artificial Intelligence in the Rio Grande Valley, with Jean-Batiste Tondji and Maroula Khraiche, CBEST Border and Business Briefs (2025), 22 (1), 1-7

Summary. This brief examines labor market outcomes in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). Using worker-level data from the American Community Survey (ACS), it first characterizes the distribution of individuals' occupations and their associated wages in the RGV. Then, it integrates occupational skill requirements from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) to analyze the skill composition of jobs in the RGV and the relationships among these skills. Finally, drawing on measures of occupational-level exposure to artificial intelligence (AI), the brief assesses the extent to which jobs in the RGV are susceptible to AI-related transformation.

Private School Vouchers in Texas: Past experience and future consequences, with Jean-Batiste Tondji and Maroula Khraiche, CBEST Border and Business Briefs (2025), 21 (2), 1-6

Summary. On May 3, 2025, Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2 into law, authorizing the establishment of an education savings account program (or a private school voucher program) that will allow Texan families to use at least $1 billion in public taxpayer dollars to fund their children’s private and home-school education (Edison, 2025a). Implementation of the law is expected to start in 2026. In the tug of war between parental choice in education and public education funding, parental choice prevailed. School vouchers are widely studied in economics, and the outcomes of such programs have been documented in several natural experiments. In this brief review, we examine the literature on school vouchers, including the arguments for and against them, as well as the empirical studies that have documented their impact on student outcomes.