Published Research

My research operates at the intersection of social justice and economics. I believe the world needs rigorous analysis of racial, gender, class, and other types of inequality and research that evaluates potential solutions to these issues.

 
 
 

The above shows the sudden increase in largely white schools after the 2007 Supreme Court ruling.

A comparison of a baseline model (2007) with placebo models which track changes in white migration patterns over the years.

Mitigating White Flight and making test score gaps tight?

What promise does racial integration hold for this generation's students? I explore this question and more in my senior thesis, "Mitigating White Flight and Making Test Score Gaps Tight: Evidence from the End of School Integration in Seattle." You can read the publication in The Harvard Undergraduate Research Journal here and the full thesis here.

I leverage the sudden decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District in 2007 to evaluate the effect of the end of racial integration in Seattle. I find the court ruling had two major effects: (1) white families were more likely to live in Seattle and (2) the test scores of black students increased at a significantly higher rate than the test scores of white students after the court ruling. Thus the court ruling appears to have mitigated the historical trend of white flight from cities and reduced the racial test score gap.

While the end of racial integration in Seattle mitigated the effects of white flight and had test score benefits for students, this should not be read as an endorsement for eliminating school integration plans. Rather these findings highlight the sensitivity of white families to school integration policies. If racial integration plans aim to equally distribute social and monetary capital across schools, they must not force out the capital of white families first. Integration plans that are able to attract white and affluent families back to urban schools will likely have the most positive effects on educational equity.

Charter Schools in Michigan

Does increasing student access to charter schools lead to more equitable outcomes for all? I evaluate this question in "The Impact of Increasing Charter School Enrollment on the Achievement Gap: Evidence from Michigan," leveraging plausibly exogenous increases in charter enrollment after the Michigan state cap on charters was lifted in 2011. I find that charter enrollment is negatively associated with the size of the racial test-score gap, but these results are unlikely to be purely causal. Nonetheless, it seems likely that charter schools do not exacerbate the achievement gap. You can read this research here and at Stanford's Undergraduate Econ Journal.

A figure tracking the increase in state charter activity before and after the state cap was raised.

A figure tracking the increase in state charter activity before and after the state cap was raised.

Summary statistics from the paper documenting native versus migrant use in welfare programs before and after the 1996 welfare reform act.

IMMIGRANTS AND WELFARE IN THE US

In my first published publication, "Living in the Shadows or Government Dependents: Immigrants and Welfare in the United States," I explore immigrant take up of various welfare programs over time. In this paper I found 2 trends:

  1. There is no significant difference between the welfare use of similar immigrants and natives
  2. Immigrant welfare use decreased after the 1996 welfare reform act mainly driven by less Medicaid take up

You can read the full paper here and at Stanford's Undergraduate Econ Journal.