Publications/ Accepted Papers
A Quantitative Theory of Domestic Outsourcing: The Role of Wage-Proportional Staffing Fees (Forthcoming- 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.
The Life-Cycle Implications of Temporary Employment Contracts (American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2026, 18(3): 200-235)
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.
Working Papers
The Shift from Traditional Pensions to 401(k)s: Retirement Risks and the Timing of Retirement with Xiaohui Sun and Yang Xuan
U.S. retirement coverage has shifted from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) plans. We build a life-cycle model in which DB and DC plans differ in exposure to longevity and return risk and households respond to the additional risks by saving more and working longer. The model matches observed differences in retirement timing across plan types and decomposes the effects of the transition into plan structure and generosity, return risk, and longevity risk. Return risk is the main driver of delayed retirement, while longevity risk is the main source of the welfare loss attributable to uncertainty. We then evaluate annuitization as a way to improve the insurance provided by accumulated assets. Allowing retirees to convert assets into actuarially fair annuities raises welfare and induces earlier retirement, with larger gains after the shift toward DC plans.
Regulating Labor Market Intermediation: Fee Design and the Screening-Investment Tradeoff
This paper studies how intermediary fee design shapes labor market outcomes. I develop a model where intermediaries choose hidden screening effort, and worker-firm pairs make non-contractible match-specific investments. Output-proportional fees encourage intermediaries to create high-productivity matches but reduce post-match investment incentives. When match quality is unobserved, output-contingent fees generally cannot implement both efficient screening and investment. Motivated by this tradeoff, I evaluate bonus fees that reward high productivity while preserving investment incentives. In a quantitative model calibrated to Mexico before the 2021 outsourcing reform, banning intermediation raises wages and average match productivity but increases unemployment and lowers welfare, while replacing proportional fees with bonus-like fees increases output and welfare.
Labor Force Participation, College Enrollment, and the Business Cycle, with Zhifeng Cai
This paper studies how college enrollment and labor force participation interact over the life and business cycles, showing that participation is especially responsive to aggregate fluctuations among young workers without a bachelor’s degree and that college attendance plays an important role in this response. An overlapping-generations directed search model captures endogenous college attendance, labor force participation, and human capital accumulation, with college returns exposed to aggregate, unemployment, and non-participation risk. While a uniform search subsidy can reduce welfare by drawing young individuals away from college, a subsidy targeted to unemployed college graduates insures post-college labor market risk, increases college attainment, and raises welfare.
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.