Job Market Paper
Married to the Rules: Social Security, Labor Supply, and Welfare [Draft coming soon.]
Abstract: This paper studies how marriage-based Social Security provisions contribute to racial inequality in women’s retirement outcomes. Spousal and survivor benefits link retirement income to marital history and spousal earnings, creating implicit taxes on labor supply while redistributing resources unevenly across households. Because marriage patterns, earnings trajectories, and longevity differ substantially by race, these provisions generate unequal access to Social Security insurance among women. I develop and calibrate a quantitative life-cycle model with singles and couples, endogenous labor supply and savings, marriage and divorce transitions, and heterogeneous earnings and survival risk. Focusing on differences between Black and White women, I evaluate a revenue-neutral reform that replaces marriage-based benefits with higher retired-worker benefits. The results show that the current system generates important labor supply distortions and disproportionately advantages women with stronger attachment to marriage-based eligibility, while reform increases labor supply and improves welfare for women with weaker access to spousal and survivor benefits.
Publication
The Spatial Origins of Venture Capital: Human Capital and Financial Innovation in the Postwar United States – with Caroline Fohlin [forthcoming at Cliometrica]
Abstract: This paper examines the geography of U.S. venture capital during its formative decades of the 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on newly assembled data on Small Business Investment Companies (SBICs), VC firms, PhD production, and industrial R&D laboratories, we show that specialized risk capital emerged where innovation-supporting institutions and educated populations were already concentrated. State-level analyses find that population, urbanization, and federal R&D spending predict SBIC presence. At the metropolitan level, wartime OSRD-funded patents and PhD production predict both whether and how extensively venture capital took root. These historical findings underscore that policies expanding venture capital supply without the prerequisite human capital infrastructure face fundamental limitations.
Work in Progress
AI, Labor Force Participation, and Inclusion: A Quantitative Model for Women and Youth in MENA and CCA Economies
Abstract: This project develops a quantitative macroeconomic model to study how artificial intelligence affects labor force participation, hours worked, wages, and welfare for women and youth in Middle East and Central Asia economies. The framework emphasizes differences in AI exposure and AI readiness across demographic groups and evaluates whether AI adoption promotes labor market inclusion or amplifies existing inequalities in the region.