About

I am an Assistant Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC-Berkeley, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Fellow at the TIAA Institute. I study consumer behavior in health insurance, retirement saving, and other social insurance programs. My research seeks to generate policy insights that improve economic security and welfare.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Operations management
• Mechanical engineering
• Business
• Engineering
• Operating system
• Labour economics
• Economics

Selected publications

• Fit to Consume: How Health Shapes Preferences for Consumption

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Does mandatory retirement saving crowd out voluntary retirement saving?

  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization · 2024-07-16 · 4 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Wage Insurance for Displaced Workers

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-05-01 · 3 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  Wage insurance provides income support to displaced workers who find reemployment at a lower wage.We analyze wage insurance in the context of the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program by merging linked employer-employee Census data to TAA petitions and leveraging a discontinuity in eligibility based on worker age.Wage insurance eligibility increases short-run employment probabilities and leads to higher long-run cumulative earnings.We find shorter nonemployment durations largely drive increased long-term earnings among workers eligible for wage insurance.Our results are quantitatively consistent with a standard non-stationary partial equilibrium search model.The program is self-financing even under conservative assumptions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Wage Insurance for Displaced Workers

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Wage Insurance for Displaced Workers

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 5 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Virginia Work Requirements Experiments

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2024-02-26

  dataset
  PublisherDOI

• Virginia Work Requirements Experiments

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2024-02-26

  dataset
  PublisherDOI

• On resource allocation in health care: The case of concierge medicine

  Journal of Health Economics · 2023-06-01 · 16 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Employed in a SNAP? The Impact of Work Requirements on Program Participation and Labor Supply

  American Economic Journal Economic Policy · 2023-01-31 · 37 citations

  article

  Work requirements are common in US safety net programs. Evidence remains limited, however, on the extent to which work requirements increase economic self-sufficiency or screen out vulnerable individuals. Using linked administrative data on food stamps (SNAP) and earnings with a regression discontinuity design, we find robust evidence that work requirements increase program exits by 23 percentage points (64 percent) among incumbent participants. Overall program participation among adults who are subject to work requirements is reduced by 53 percent. Homeless adults are disproportionately screened out. We find no effects on employment and suggestive evidence of increased earnings in some specifications. (JEL H75, I18, I32, I38, J22, J31)

  PublisherDOI

• Health Savings Accounts and life-cycle saving: Implications for retirement preparedness

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ece Özçelik

  Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques

  112 shared

• Rafael Cortez

  112 shared

• Patrick Eozenou

  World Bank

  112 shared

• Marc Smitz

  Oxford Policy Management

  111 shared

• Aaka Pande

  110 shared

• Kelsey Pukelis

  John F. Kennedy University

  84 shared

• Elena Prager

  University of Rochester

  83 shared

• Mary Zaki

  Agricultural & Applied Economics Association

  83 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School

• B.A.

  Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs

Awards & honors

• 2022 TIAA Institute Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding…