My research agenda has focused upon the skills and composition of the American workforce, with an emphasis on the effects of racial diversity and the causes and consequences of immigration. Though my initial work adopted a macroeconomic perspective, I have increasingly borrowed insights and tools from labor economics, urban economics, international trade, and public economics.
PhD, MA University of California-Davis 2006, 2002
BA Western Washington University 2000
Seminar on the Economics of Race and Ethnicity
Urban Economics
Intermediate Macroeconomics
Introduction to Economics
Introduction to Statistics
London Econonomics Study Group (Spring 2009, Spring 2013)
Macroeconomics: Immigration, Labor, Growth, and Development
Immigration
After arriving at Colgate, I began to work with my graduate school advisor, Giovanni Peri, on several papers asking how native workers respond to immigration. We do not find evidence that immigration reduces wages or pushes natives to move to new states in search of better labor market opportunities. Instead, our research notes that less-educated native and foreign-born workers are employed in strikingly different occupations. Natives specialize in communication-intense work, while immigrants specialize in manual labor. This helps natives to effectively protect themselves from competition with immigrants. Immigration induces natives to increasingly specialize in higher-paying communication occupations so that wage losses from immigration are small.
In later work, we asked similar questions about the market for highly-educated labor, and found that native workers with a graduate degree again specialize in communication work, but highly-educated immigrants instead specialize in quantitative and analytical occupations. Immigration continues to encourage further specialization.
More recently, I have been exploring how U.S. policy and macroeconomic conditions affect immigration and the immigrants themselves. In work with Takao Kato, we argue that by restricting temporary skilled immigration, the United States has also reduced the quality of international students considering a US education. This effect is largely driven by a decline in the number of students from the top quintile of the ability distribution.
In a paper with Nicole Simpson exploring the determinants of bilateral immigration flows, we find that although short-run GDP fluctuations pull immigrants into particular states, trend GDP is more important for pushing migrants out of their home countries.
My current research (with Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes) is assessing whether in-state tuition subsidies affect college enrollment and the cost of college attendance for illegal immigrants and other demographic groups. We are discovering that policy has increased enrollment among illegal immigrants, but we do not find evidence that costs have risen for native students.
Racial Diversity
Though I do not have any current projects examining the effects of racial diversity, my dissertation explored whether racial diversity has positive or negative effects on economic outcomes in the United States. My interest in this topic began in my primary field of specialization in graduate school – economic growth. I was motivated well-known cross-country growth studies arguing that diversity impedes economic development. I felt that those papers missed an important issue – that diversity could have heterogeneous effects across economies.
My dissertation found that the US experience differs from that of other countries. City-level analysis indicates that racial diversity generates economic gains in the form of higher wages. Evidence at the state-level is ambiguous, however, as results depend upon the specific econometric technique used. The effects of diversity also vary across sectors of the economy. Industries employing a large number of workers responsible for creative decision-making and customer service experience gain from diversity, while industries characterized by high levels of group effort suffer losses. In this sense, my research has helped reconcile two competing literatures by suggesting that diversity improves decision-making and problem solving, but also encumbers common action and public goods provision.
- "Short- and Long-Run Determinants of Less-Educated Immigration Flows into U.S. States" (with Nicole Simpson), Southern Economic Journal, Forthcoming (Working Paper)
- "Quotas and Quality: The Effect of H-1B Visa Restrictions on the Pool of Prospective Undergraduate Students from Abroad" (with Takao Kato), Review of Economics and Statistics, Forthcoming (Working Paper)
- "Highly-Educated Immigrants and Native Occupational Choice" (with Giovanni Peri), Industrial Relations, Vol. 50 (3): 385-411, July 2011 (Working Paper 2010; Working Paper 2008)
- “Assessing Inherent Model Bias: An Application to Native Displacement in Response to Immigration” (with Giovanni Peri), Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 69 (1): 82-91, January 2011 (Working Paper)
- "Racial Diversity and Macroeconomic Productivity across US States and Cities," Regional Studies, Vol. 44 (1): 71-85, February 2010 (Working Paper)
- "Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages" (with Giovanni Peri), American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Vol. 1 (3): 135-169, July 2009 (Working Paper) [Earlier Version Title: "Task Specialization, Comparative Advantages, and the Effects of Immigration on Wages" (Working Paper)]
- "Racial Diversity and Aggregate Productivity in US Industries: 1980-2000," Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 75 (3): 829-856, January 2009 (Working Paper) [Earlier Version Title: "Racial Diversity and Economic Productivity - Industry Level Evidence"]
- "A Theory of Racial Diversity, Segregation, and Productivity," Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 87 (2): 210-226, October 2008 (Working Paper)
- “In-State Tuition for Undocumented Immigrants and its Impact on College Enrollment, Tuition Costs, Student Financial Aid, and Indebtedness” (with Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes), IZA Discussion Paper 6857, September (2012)
- External Research Fellow, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), University College London, May 2009 - Present
- Ray J. Beaumont Memorial Award, May 2006
- University of California Office of the President Dissertation Year Fellowship Award, 2005-06
- Foundation for Teaching Economics Fellowship, July 2004
- Determinants of Economic Success Fellowship, June 2004
- IGERT National Science Foundation Research Fellowship, 2001-02
- Forbes (2013): Arguments supporting expansion of the H-1B program (a favorable citation).
- The Atlantic (2013): Arguments against expansion of the H-1B program (a less-than-favorable citation).
- Wall Street Journal (2013): An op-ed piece about highly-educated immigrants' contributions to US productivity.
- New York Times (2012): An article arguing that immigration has not responsible for declines in the US standard of living.
- New York Times Blog (2012): A lengthier discussion of immigration and jobs.
- Cato Institute (2012): A policy piece using my co-authored research as evidence that the US should not restrict immigration.
- Colgate (2011): Video on the effects of H-1B policy on university education.
- Federal Reserve (2010): A brief summary of immigration’s effect on the US labor market.
- Daily Kos (2008): A blog that calls my co-authored work “typical neoclassical pig manure… by bloviating nimrod economist(s).”
- Milken Institute (2007): More evidence on the gains from immigration.
- Newsweek (2007): Fareed Zakaria’s take on our research.
- Puget Sound Business Journal (2001): A piece of urban economics from my first job after college.
- Kitsap Sun (1999): My undergraduate contribution to urban economics.