Contact Information
Department of Economics
Northwestern University
2211 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Phone: 206-225-4309
Education
Ph.D., Economics, Northwestern University, 2021 (expected)
M.A., Economics, Northwestern University, 2017
B.A. (cum laude), Mathematics, Economics, Williams College, 2013
Primary Fields of Specialization
Labor, Development
Secondary Fields of Specialization
Urban, Econometrics
Curriculum Vitae
Job Market Paper
“Chinese Capital Flight to the US Real Estate Market” (with Joris Mueller)
Download Job Market Paper (PDF)
Wealthy foreign real estate buyers have increased rapidly over the past few decades. Of particular note are those from China; in 2016 alone, Chinese buyers were the source of over 100 billion USD of outflows to foreign real estate markets. In this paper, I investigate the effect that these wealthy Chinese buyers have on local US housing markets. Using a novel instrument, I demonstrate that an increase in the share of wealthy Chinese buyers in a locality causes an increase in house price growth. As a result of this increased growth, local governments benefit from increased property tax revenues, but do not see a drop in sales tax revenues, suggesting that the vacancy rate for wealthy Chinese is not actually different from counterfactual buyers, while a drop in rental prices suggests that wealthy Chinese are more likely to rent out their houses and less likely to move into them.
Other Work
“The Effects of Immigration Restriction: Evidence from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act”
To examine the effects of restrictive immigration policy, I exploit the natural experiment resulting from the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. I find that the Act not only cut off the inflow of new immigrants but also resulted in outflows of immigrants from initially high-immigrant population counties. As a result, these areas that experience higher outflows see drops in farm value. I find no corresponding effect in manufacturing, consistent with the fact that Chinese immigrants were less likely to be employed in manufacturing relative to the agricultural sector. I also find evidence that the share of remaining Chinese immigrants employed in jobs most associated with foreign-local competition drops, while the share with characteristics associated with assimilation rises, suggesting that despite productivity losses, the Act may have succeeded in reducing the perceived economic and cultural threat of Chinese immigrants.
References
Prof. Nancy Qian (Committee Chair)
Prof. Lori Beaman
Prof. Dean Karlan
Prof. Daley Kutzman (teaching reference)