research

working papers

“As Seen On TV: The Effects of Advertising on Demand for College” (job market paper) [click to download]

• Abstract: U.S. colleges spent over $2 billion on paid ads in 2019, but to unknown effect. This paper investigates the effects of advertising on demand for college. My empirical strategy exploits regulation-induced discontinuities in TV advertising at local media market boundaries and is applied using a novel linkage between the universe of Texas high school graduates and the universe of spot TV ads in Texas. I find that advertising increases college-going, with relatively larger effects for low-income and Hispanic students and less-selective colleges. I then develop and estimate a discrete choice demand model to simulate the enrollment response to a ban on college advertising. Results indicate that the market shares of community colleges and for-profit colleges would decline while the share of students attending no college or a public 4-year would increase. Disadvantaged and minority students are more likely to forego college altogether.
• Funding: NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, IES Pre-Doctoral Fellowship

“Cost Uncertainty, Financial Aid, and the Enrollment Choices of Low-Income Students“ [click to download]

• Abstract: Research shows that college costs and financial aid affect students’ choices and outcomes, but less attention has been paid to the role of uncertainty in total degree (four-year college) costs. This study offers new evidence on the importance of financial aid and degree cost certainty for students’ decisions about where to attend college. Leveraging a unique tuition promise at a public flagship, where eligibility is determined by household adjusted gross income (AGI), I study how the upfront commitment of grants to cover four years of tuition for middle- and lower-income residents affects the decision to enroll conditional on an admissions offer. I use a regression discontinuity design that exploits the cutoff in AGI and a differences-in-differences design to isolate the effects of the four-year tuition guarantee. I find that in its first year, the program meaningfully increases grant aid and enrollment among middle-income students. In addition, results indicate that the promise component of the program increases enrollment yield of low-income students, suggesting that they value the certainty provided by the advance commitment of full tuition coverage.
• Funding: IES Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, Student Success Through Applied Research (SSTAR) Lab
• Presentations: Association for Public Policy and Management (APPAM), Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA)

“The Spillover Effects of Universal Pre-K on Mothers’ Labor Supply” [click to download]

• Abstract: This paper offers new evidence of the effect of universal pre-k on mothers’ labor supply. I study the 2014 introduction of Pre-K For All in New York City, which increased the city’s capacity of publicly-funded, full-day pre-K seats from 20,000 in 2013 to approximately 70,000 in 2015. To identify the causal impact on mothers’ labor supply, I use a difference-in-differences (DID) research design that leverages age and residency eligibility requirements to construct two different comparison groups of mothers: mothers of same-aged children in nearby New Jersey, and mothers of slightly older children that reside in NYC. I find that Pre-K For All induces mothers to increase their labor market activity both on the extensive and intensive margins, with participation rates increasing between 3.3 and 8.4 percentage points and usual hours worked per week increasing between 0.7 to 2.4 hours, depending on the time frame considered. These results suggest that access to child care is an important factor that reduces the labor supply of mothers with young children.
• Funding: Juli Plant Grainger Summer Research Fellowship, IES Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
• Presentations: Society of Labor Economists (SOLE), H2D2 at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

“Selling the American Dream: The Competitive Effects of Advertising by Less-Selective Colleges” [preliminary draft available upon request] [click for slides]

• Abstract: This is the first paper to study the effects of own and rival college advertising spending on new college enrollments. I assemble a dataset that links local TV advertising to data on less-selective colleges and adopt a novel identification strategy that exploits unexpected variation in local TV viewership. I find that advertising by for-profit colleges has large and positive effects on own enrollment, but advertising by public colleges has little to no effect on own enrollment. For rival advertising, pairwise cross-sector enrollment effects are heterogeneous, reflecting both business stealing and positive spillovers: Advertising by 2-year for-profit colleges leads students to substitute away from both 2- and 4-year public colleges; advertising by 4-year public colleges reduces enrollment at 4-year for-profits but increases enrollment at other 4-year public colleges, while advertising by 4-year for-profit colleges increases enrollment at rival institutions.
• Funding: Mary Claire Aschenbrener Phipps Dissertation Fellowship, American Educational Research Association (AERA) Dissertation Grant, UW-Madison Graduate School and Department of Economics Fellowship, IES Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
• Presentations: AEFP, Young Economists’ Symposium (YES) at Yale University, Western Economic Association International (WEAI) Graduate Student Workshop, AERA Annual Meeting

works in progress

“Markets for Firearms” with Jonathan E. Becker [click to download]

• Abstract: Gun violence in the United States claims over 30,000 lives per year. Despite this large social cost, little is known about supply-side forces in the market for firearms due to the ubiquity of secondary gun markets, which are subject to substantially weaker regulatory oversight than legal sellers. This paper documents new empirical facts about markets for firearms. To study the secondary market, we develop a novel dataset that includes detailed listing information from a major online platform for firearms sales. We complement our dataset with pricing data collected from a major firearms trade publication. Using these two data sources, we first document cross-state differences in secondary gun market activity and pricing. We then incorporate information on the locations of licensed dealers to examine the structure of competition within and between primary and secondary markets. Finally, we bring in data on crime guns and gun violence to study the spatial relationship between firearms access and firearms incidents.
• Funding: Juli Plant Grainger Summer Research Fellowship

“Information vs. Persuasion in College Advertising”