Research

This paper studies how expanded local alcohol access affects traffic safety using close local option elections in Texas as a source of quasi-random variation. Legalization between 2003 and 2019 leads to a large increase in liquor licenses, driven almost entirely by off-premise retailers, and shifts alcohol sales from bars and restaurants toward retail outlets. Despite these sizable market changes, the paper finds no meaningful increase in total crashes, DUI crashes, or fatal crashes, and no evidence of spillovers to neighboring cities.

This project studies how faculty and graduate-student unionization changes sorting, employment, wages, and research productivity in U.S. academic labor markets. Using staggered union recognition and contract ratification across public and private universities, together with legislative timing as an instrument for union exposure, it examines how collective bargaining shapes mobility, incentives, and innovation in a high-skill knowledge sector.

This project estimates the causal impact of legalized sports betting on college students’ academic success. Using quasi-random variation in exposure to live sporting events generated by the interaction of individual fandom and course-specific academic schedules at Purdue University, it studies how sports betting affects course grades, classroom participation, and academic progress. The results will inform university administrators and state lawmakers as they assess the consequences of this newly legalized practice for student outcomes.