Estimating Substitution Using Text Embeddings: Evidence from the Film Industry

Spring 2024. My second-year paper for the Economics PhD. Replication files are available on GitHub.

Abstract: Using text descriptions of films in conjunction with weekly box office receipts, I develop a novel model of characteristic-space competition in the film industry. By exploiting plausably exogeneous variation in film release windows, I identify the impact of competitor characteristics on film revenue. As films become more similar, the impact of competition increases. Due to the film industry’s thin profit margins and high fixed costs, replacing a competitor in the 10th percentile of similarity with one in the 90th percentile can reduce profit by as much as 47%.

Gender Quotas and Perceptions of Ability

Fall 2020-Spring 2021. Developed over the course of the Behavioral and Experimental Economics sequence. Submitted as my National Science Foundation GRFP proposal.

Abstract: I propose a novel experiment to estimate the effect of admission quotas on perceptions of ability, both among quota recipients and others.

A Competitive Market for Kidney Patients

Spring 2020. My term paper for Simplicity and Complexity in Economic Theory taught by Mohammad Akbarpour and Paul Milgrom. Replication files are available on GitHub.

Abstract: Despite the economies of scale present in kidney exchanges, the market for kidneys remains highly fragmented. Moreover, despite theoretical evidence supporting the virtues of “patient” matching algorithms, there is not yet a consensus on periodic matching: exchanges run their matches anywhere between quarterly and daily. I argue that given positive waiting costs, ``easy to match’’ recipient/donor pairs will prefer greedy exchanges to more patient options. Thus, exchanges are privately incentivized to match more frequently than would be socially optimal, as this draws in the most desirable donors. In simulations, welfare falls in the presence of heterogeneous competing exchanges, and patients who select into frequently matching exchanges are disproportionately easy to match.

Two-Sided Course Allocation: A Modified CEEI

Fall 2019. My term paper for Matching and Market Design taught by Muriel Niederle, Michael Ostrovsky, and Al Roth. Replication files are available on GitHub.

Abstract: I develop a modified version of Budish (2011)’s Approximate Competitive Equilibrium from Equal Incomes (or A-CEEI) which allows school administrators to correct market failures unaddressed in the original mechanism by taxing student enrollment. This system preserves A-CEEI’s incentive compatibility and lack of congestion while maintaining reasonable fairness and efficiency bounds, and adds the ability for matches to contain a degree of two-sidedness. While the lack of an outside good prevents computation of an optimal tax rate, I outline the impact of various types of tax schema changes, as well as advise on how to correct tax rates when presented with an undesired equilibrium. Finally I derive a boundary on market-clearing error when computing this allocation given a set tax schema. As far as I am aware, this is the only mechanism developed which is incentive compatible, uncongested, and two-sided that also provides bounds on fairness and efficiency losses.

Investigating the Effects of Student Debt on Career Outcomes: An Empirical Approach

Spring 2019. My undergraduate thesis; received High Honors from the Economics department. Supervised by John Fitzgerald, and later advised by Matthew Botsch and Dan Stone. Also available at the Bowdoin Digital Commons. Replication files are available on GitHub.

High student debt has been hypothesized to affect career choice, causing students todesire stable, high paying jobs. To test this hypothesis, I rely on plausibly exogenous variation in debt due to a federal policy shift. In the summer of 2007, the Higher Education Reconciliation Act (or HERA) expanded the cap for federally subsidized student loans. I examine how variation in debt affects career choice and eventual salary of students using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Child and Young Adult Cohort of students who were of college age during the implementation of the policy. I find that student debt has no impact on salary two years after graduation; however, it does seem to shift students’ career choices, leading some to avoid careers in public service industries such as teaching and social work.