Peer-Reviewed Publications

"International Financial Volatility and Commodity Exports: Evidence from the Thai Agricultural Sector" forthcoming in American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2010.

"Trade and Migration in an Enlarged European Union: A Spatial Analysis" forthcoming in Global Economy Journal of the Berkeley Electronic Press, 2009.

"Jump Down, Turn Around, Pick a Bale of...Poverty? U.S. Cotton Policy and Household Income in Côte d'Ivoire" in Economics of Developing Countries, Tiago N. Caldeira, ed. Nova Publishers, 2009.

Working Papers

"International Water Contracts and Household Outcomes: Evidence from Albania" with Andrew Bacher-Hicks (under review)

"State-Level Employment Protection and Inward Foreign Direct Investment in the U.S." with Ivan Kandilov and Mine Senses

We estimate the effect on measures of inward foreign direct investment of three wrongful discharge protection measures---the good faith (GF), implied contract (IC), and public policy (PP) exceptions---adopted by U.S. state courts during the last three decades (Autor et al. 2006). Theory predicts that by varying the cost of labor force adjustment these laws may alter the incentives of a foreign firm investing in the United States. Foreign investment serves as a source of high-skill jobs in many states, meaning that this question should be of primary importance to policy makers.  We measure foreign direct investment using both state-level employment in foreign affiliates and gross value of foreign owned plant, property, and equipment. Further, we control for a variety of time varying state characteristics including wages, levels of unionization, public support of industry, and a measure of market proximity. Because U.S. states share many unobservable characteristics, this approach avoids a number of the usual pitfalls of using country-level variation in employment protection. Results suggest that adoption of any of the three laws reduces state employment in foreign affiliates by about six percent. Comparing our findings with Autor et al. (2006) demonstrates that state-level employment in foreign affiliates is much more sensitive to adoption of wrongful discharge protections than is overall employment.

Work in Progress

"Shifting Incentives and Responses Across the Income Distribution: Evidence from a State Lottery" with Jason P. Hulbert

That lotteries are a regressive source of state revenue is well documented (see, for example, Price and Novak [1999], Price and Novak [2000], and Rubenstein and Scafidi [2002]).  Recent work (Oster 2004) also demonstrates that the regressivity varies by jackpot level and that, at high enough jackpots, the lottery would (theoretically) become progressive. Using daily, establishment-level data on sales of five Virginia lottery games over approximately two years, we estimate the effect of local household income on local responses to changing incentives brought about by variable lottery payoffs.  We control for a variety of retailer characteristics including location and retailer type and a variety of location characteristics including average household income, average education level, racial composition, and lottery advertising.  Because Virginia is a large state with a diverse racial and economic makeup, this is an ideal environment in which to ascertain these effects.  Moreover, the size and detail of our data set (over 2.6 million observations by street address) allow for extremely precise statistical inference.  Preliminary results confirm the regressivity result of several previous studies.  However, unlike most previous work, we have data on various lottery offerings rather than just a single game.  In further analyses, we expect to find that not only does lottery play constitute a regressive tax in levels, but also, residents of low income areas are less responsive to changing payoffs.  Thus, we expect to demonstrate that not only are lotteries regressive in levels but in changes as well.  Moreover, because Oster (2004) extrapolates out of sample this could call into question some prior results.