About

Timothy J. McQuade is an Associate Professor of Finance, Real Estate, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. He holds the California Chancellor's Chair of Real Estate and Land Economics and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on Real Estate, Urban Economics, Household Finance, and Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Research topics

• Economics
• Monetary economics
• Finance
• Macroeconomics
• Labour economics
• Demographic economics
• Financial system
• Economic growth
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Native-Immigrant Entrepreneurial Synergies

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-05-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  We examine the performance of startups co-founded by immigrant and native teams.Leveraging unique data linking startups to founders' and employees' employment and education histories, we find native-migrant teams outperform native-only and migrant-only teams.Native-migrant startups have larger employment three years after founding, are more likely to secure funding, access larger funding rounds, and achieve more successful exits.An instrumental variables strategy based on native shares in university-degree programs confirms native-migrant teams are larger and more likely to receive funding.Superior access to diverse labor pools, successful VCs, and expanded product markets are key factors in driving native-migrant outperformance.

  PublisherDOI

• Native-Immigrant Entrepreneurial Synergies

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• ESG is the Most Polarizing Nonwage Amenity: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Brazil

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• ESG Is The Most Polarizing Nonwage Amenity: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Brazil

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-02-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access

  We examine job-seekers' heterogeneous preferences for nonwage amenities, with a focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices, using an incentivized field experiment in Brazil.Our findings reveal that ESG is the most polarizing nonwage amenity across multiple sociodemographic groups, with the strongest preferences observed among highly educated, white, and politically liberal individuals (Colonnelli et al., 2025).While women report a stronger preference for work-from-home policies, all other nonwage amenities exhibit minimal variation across sociodemographic groups.Our findings highlight the critical role of corporate values in shaping economic outcomes within an increasingly polarized society.

  PublisherDOI

• Return Migration and Human Capital Flows

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-04-01 · 18 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  We bring to bear a novel dataset covering the employment history of about 450 million individuals from 180 countries to study return migration and the impact of skilled international migration on human capital stocks across countries. Return migration is a common phenomenon, with 38% of skilled migrants returning to their origin countries within 10 years. Return migration is significantly correlated with industry growth in the origin and destination countries, and is asymmetrically exposed to negative firm employment growth. Using an AKM-style model, we identify worker and country-firm fixed effects, as well as the returns to experience and education by location and current workplace. For workers in emerging economies, the returns to a year of experience in the United States are 59-204% higher than a year of experience in the origin country. Migrants to advanced economies are positively selected on ability relative to stayers, while within this migrant population, returnees exhibit lower ability. Simulations suggest that eliminating skilled international migration would have highly heterogeneous effects across countries, adjusting total (average) human capital stocks within a range of -60% to 40% (-3% to 4%).

  PublisherDOI

• Return Migration and Human Capital Flows

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Replication package for: The 2000s Housing Boom With 2020 Hindsight: A Neo-Kindlebergerian View

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2023-01-17

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  This replication package includes code and data to reproduce the tables and figures in: Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Adam Guren, and Timothy McQuade, "The 2000s Housing Boom With 2020 Hindsight: A Neo-Kindlebergerian View", Review of Economic Studies

  PublisherDOI

• Polarizing Corporations: Does Talent Flow to "Good" Firms?

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-11-01 · 21 citations

  reportOpen access

  We conduct a field experiment in partnership with the largest job platform in Brazil to study how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices of firms affect talent allocation.We find both an average job-seeker's preference for ESG and a large degree of heterogeneity across socioeconomic groups, with the strongest preference displayed by highly educated, white, and politically liberal individuals.We combine our experimental estimates with administrative matched employer-employee microdata and estimate an equilibrium model of the labor market.Counterfactual analyses suggest ESG practices increase total economic output and worker welfare, while increasing the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication package for: The 2000s Housing Boom With 2020 Hindsight: A Neo-Kindlebergerian View

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2023-01-17

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  This replication package includes code and data to reproduce the tables and figures in: Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Adam Guren, and Timothy McQuade, "The 2000s Housing Boom With 2020 Hindsight: A Neo-Kindlebergerian View", Review of Economic Studies

  PublisherDOI

• Polarizing Corporations: Does Talent Flow to "Good" Firms?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Stephen W. Salant

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  13 shared

• Adam Guren

  11 shared

• Jason A. Winfree

  9 shared

• Gabriel Chodorow-Reich

  7 shared

• Emanuele Colonnelli

  7 shared

• Rebecca Diamond

  7 shared

• Shai Bernstein

  5 shared

• Richard Townsend

  University of California, San Diego

  5 shared

Awards & honors

• R. Michael Shanahan Faculty Scholar (2019–2020)
• Louise and Claude N. Rosenberg Jr. Faculty Scholar (2018–201…
• Stanford GSB Distinguished Teaching Award Finalist (2017)
• Stanford GSB Distinguished Teaching Award Recipient (2019)
• Review of Economic Studies European Tour (2013)