Working Papers
Declining Defined Benefit Plan Inclusion and the Impact on Savings and Retirement Decisions with Xiaohui Sun and Yang Xuan
To what extent has the transition from traditional defined benefit retirement plans to defined contribution plans in the U.S. influenced the decline in retirement beyond age 65? We empirically estimate differences in retirement timing by retirement plan type and construct a model where enrollment in different plans influences endogenous savings and retirement decisions. The model estimates that the shift towards defined contribution plans alone generated roughly 92% of the decline in retirement among age 65+ individuals observed since the early 1990s. A decomposition reveals that defined benefit plans induce earlier retirement mainly by alleviating risk associated with an uncertain planning horizon (life expectancy).
A Quantitative Theory of Domestic Outsourcing: The Role of Wage-Proportional Staffing Fees (Revise and Resubmit - Journal of Labor Economics)
This paper examines the trade-offs of domestic labor outsourcing, where workers are employed by staffing agencies but managed by user firms. Staffing agencies provide fast job matches in exchange for ongoing wage-proportional fees, which reduce incentives to invest in human capital. I develop a directed search model with endogenous investment and sorting to quantify the trade-off between improved employment prospects and weaker investment incentives. In the calibrated model, the employment benefits of outsourcing dominate, raising average human capital and total utility. However, counterfactuals reveal that when staffing fees are sufficiently high, outsourcing can have adverse aggregate effects.
Labor Force Participation, College Enrollment, and the Business Cycle, with Zhifeng Cai
Incentives to pursue education significantly influence young individuals' labor force participation decisions in the United States. We capture the participation incentives of different age groups in a search model where overlapping generations make college education decisions and experience on-the-job human capital growth. While broadly applied job search subsidies may lower welfare, as they discourage college enrollment and negatively impact human capital in the long run, a subsidy targeting the old can raise overall welfare.
The Life-Cycle Implications of Temporary Employment Contracts (Accepted - AEJ Macro)
Workers with greater job security experience fewer unemployment spells and tend to accumulate more human capital over their careers. I show that policies reducing employment protections boost younger workers’ job-finding rates but lower human capital, GDP, and employment. The impacts of these policies differ significantly by age.
Other/Older Work
Making the Most of General Purpose Technologies, with Cici McNamara
We develop a framework to study how competition among providers of general purpose technologies affects firm and household technology adoption and subsequent macroeconomic outcomes. We apply the model using a novel data set on broadband availability, speed, and prices.
An Averaging Index of State Business Climate Rankings. 2016. Inside INdiana Business with Dick Heupel
We propose a mean ranking system combining states' business climate rankings from multiple sources and show that our ranking tends to be more predictive of state output and employment.