Research
My primary fields of interest are Behavioral, Experimental, and Development Economics.
I currently study meaningful work, workfare effects, and work signaling.
Publications:
with Jens. H. E. Christensen, Eric Fischer, and Simon Zhu - Journal of International Economics, September 2024​​
To study inflation expectations and associated risk premia in emerging bond markets, we provide estimates for Mexico based on an arbitrage-free dynamic term structure model of nominal and real bond prices that accounts for their liquidity risk. Beyond documenting the existence of large and weakly correlated liquidity premia in nominal and real bond prices, our results indicate that long-term inflation expectations in Mexico are well anchored close to the Bank of Mexico’s inflation target. Furthermore, Mexican inflation risk premia are larger and more volatile than those in Canada and the United States.
Working Papers:
Invited to present at BABEEW, WEAI, ESA, and AEA CSQIEP Mentoring Conference; received 2025 Bacon Family Summer Fellowship​
How meaningful one finds their work is a key non-monetary incentive for both extensive and intensive margins of labor supply. Unlike other intrinsic incentives, however, the impact of work meaning may be highly task-specific and idiosyncratic. I develop a simple mixed-incentives model and novel experiment to systematically examine how perceived work meaning impacts productivity. First, I document substantial heterogeneity in both worker perceptions of and preferences for work meaning. Second, I show that the effects of work meaning vary across task types. Third, I find that higher perceived meaningfulness is significantly associated with greater output—both in quality and quantity—for certain tasks. Further analyses suggest these effects may be interpreted as causal. Finally, I test an intervention aimed at increasing workers’ awareness of their own valuation of work meaning, offering insight into how such preferences might be leveraged in organizational settings.​​​
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What Moves Meaning? Investigating Drivers of an Idiosyncratic Incentive (draft forthcoming)
Recent research suggests that perceptions of work meaning are highly idiosyncratic, challenging earlier theories of greater homogeneity. I design a series of laboratory experiments to test whether manipulating various factors can shift workers’ sense of meaning. Consistent with emerging findings in the field, I observe that workers respond most positively to "Inception-style" treatments—interventions that prompt them to reflect abstractly and introspectively on what they find meaningful. In contrast, treatments that convey information intended to induce a sense of meaning (e.g., emphasizing the social value of the task) produce little to no effect. Unlike other non-monetary incentives such as vacation time, meaning appears to be a reward workers prefer to uncover for themselves. This insight has important implications for the design of effective incentive structures: conventional information-based interventions may fall short, whereas more open-ended, reflective prompts may prove more effective.
Ongoing Projects:
- Benefits on the Bench: Workfare, Mental Health, and the Role of the Team
with Carlos Brito | Invited to present at Advances in Field Experiments Conference 2025​
Recent studies have found large positive effects of working compared to pure cash transfers on various measures of mental health for labor demand-constrained populations. We hypothesize that some such benefits could stem from belonging to and training with a team even if one is not ultimately selected to work, which we term as “being on the bench”. This study proposes a novel field experiment to investigate the effects of being placed on the bench by a randomized employment lottery for forcibly displaced Venezuelan migrants in Roraima, a Brazilian border state. This population is understood to have both high unemployment and job-seeking as well as poor mental health, making them both appropriate and necessary to study. As we expect these effects to operate through alignment with the meaningfulness or mission of work being trained for, we introduce variation in the meaningfulness of tasks offered. Similar to previous studies, we also include a cash transfer treatment arm and pure control for comparison.
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Evaluating the Impact of Social Norms, Signaling and Decision Empowerment on Graduate Employment Decisions About Low Paying Jobs: a Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial in Ghana
with Grace Abban-Ampiah (CEGA Fellow), Martin M. Tuuli, Richard K. Boso, Joseph Ofori-Dankwa, and Leïla Njee Bugha
Graduate unemployment in Ghana remains a pressing concern, despite rising tertiary education attainment. Less-explored explanations include the influence of social expectations as well as perceptions about the negative signal taking up certain jobs may communicate to future employers. These factors may delay labor market entry and contribute to underemployment. An additional factor may be lack of graduate empowerment to make employment decisions with skills such as communication and self confidence, which are crucial for navigating early labor markets. Taken together, these soft skills are especially critical when job opportunities do not align neatly with graduates’ expectations or social validation. Few interventions in Ghana have targeted such psychosocial readiness and adaptive capabilities needed to succeed in a dynamic job market. This pilot addresses a major policy gap in the design of youth employment interventions, which often focus on skills or job creation while underestimating social and behavioral constraints. Ghana’s National Youth Policy and initiatives, like the National Service Scheme (NSA), and YouStart, prioritize job readiness and inclusion, yet struggle to ensure job uptake and sustainability. Our pilot complements these efforts by testing soft skills-oriented, psychosocially supportive, and cost-effective interventions.
Other Projects:
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Peer Effects in Novel Strategy Diffusion
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Public Transfer Periodicity: Impacts of Myopathy on Mental Health
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What's in a Name? The Value of Resumes for Migrant Job-Seeking
with John G. Fernald and Mark M. Spiegel - VoxChina 2020-12
with Jose A. Lopez and Mark M. Spiegel - FRBSF Economic Letter 2020-11
with Mark M. Spiegel - FRBSF Economic Letter 2020-09
with John G. Fernald and Mark M. Spiegel - SF Fed Blog 2020-09.