Contact Information
Department of Economics
Northwestern University
2211 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Phone: 901-825-7557
Education
Ph.D., Economics, Northwestern University, 2018 (expected)
B.S., Economics and Mathematics, Duke University, May 2010
Primary Field of Specialization
Industrial Organization
Secondary Field of Specialization
Economics of Healthcare
Curriculum Vitae
My Dissertation: Lemon Dropping (PDF)
Job Market Paper
“Lemon Dropping: Do physicians respond to incentives?” Latest Version (PDF)
Observing geographic variation in output price regulations and input costs, I exploit physician migration to identify the effects of financial incentives on patient acceptance, scale, and practice patterns. I find that physicians are more likely to accept more profitable patients. However, omnibus environmental factors subsuming prices explain less than half of the change in physician behavior upon migration. I use a structural supply model to estimate the idiosyncratic financial incentives affecting production choices and acceptance of Medicare and Medicaid Dual Eligible patients. I find that Dual Eligibles have lower marginal cost of primary care compared to Medicare patients. Estimated marginal cost is dispersed across suppliers within a given market. The regression results and structural cost estimates together imply that equalizing prices for Dual Eligible and Medicare patients would erase the primary care access gap for low income elders. Allowing price competition would lower prices compared to the regulated status quo, but reduce access for Medicare patients due to lemon dropping.
Other Research Papers
“Revisiting competition in Panzar-Rosse” (in progress)
The results of Panzar and Rosse (1987) concerning a firm’s elasticity of revenue with respect to factor prices are reanalyzed with observable output. Assuming firms are profit maximizing, the sum of factor price elasticities for revenue is shown to be linearly related through the Lerner index to the sum of output elasticities. The residual of this relationship is shown to depend on the partial effect of factor prices on the equilibrium output price. The profit model and assumptions regarding competition in the industry place nonparametric structure on this residual. The main result allows a firm-specific test of free entry when the Lerner index is known. When the Lerner index is unknown, weak structure on competition is sufficient to bound or point identify percent markups over marginal cost using reduced form output and revenue factor price elasticities. In the multi-product firm extension, the test of competitive entry given percent markups is robust. However, product-specific Lerner indices are only bounded by Panzar-Rosse elasticities and structure on competition, with bounds given by the solution to a simple linear program. A homogeneous N-firm Cournot model is used to illustrate the nonparametric results.
“IVCRC: An Instrumental Variables Estimator for the Correlated Random Coefficients Model with Endogeneity” with Matthew Masten and Alexander Torgovitsky (in progress). Code and help file
We present the ivcrc command, which implements an instrumental variables (IV) estimator for the linear correlated random coefficients model. This model is a natural generalization of the usual linear model that allows for an endogenous, multivalued treatment with unobserved heterogeneity in treatment effects. The proposed estimator exploits recent semiparametric identification results that allow for flexible functional forms and permit many types of discrete or binary instruments. The command also allows for the estimation of varying coefficients regression, which is closely related to the proposed IV estimator. We illustrate usage of the estimator by estimating the labor market returns to education in the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey.
“Consumption and the Great Recession” with Mariacristina De Nardi and Eric French. NBER working paper 17688
We document some key facts about aggregate consumption and its subcomponents over time. We then document the behavior of some important determinants of consumption, such as consumers’ expectations about their future income, and changes in the consumers’ wealth positions. Finally, we use a simple permanent income model to show that the observed drop in consumption during the Great Recession can be explained by the observed drops in wealth and income expectations.
Teaching
Industrial Organization, Economics of Healthcare, Microeconomics, Econometrics
References
Prof. Igal Hendel (Committee Chair)
Prof. Robert Porter
Prof. Gaston Illanes
Prof. Alexander Torgovitsky