Research

Working Papers

The Macroeconomic Consequences of Family Policies (submitted)

This paper studies the macroeconomic consequences of large-scale family policies in a heterogeneous-agent overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility and child investments, a multi-period demographic structure, and childcare choices. I find that cash rewards for childbirth raise fertility at the expense of human capital and intergenerational mobility in the long run. Meanwhile, average welfare rises as the old-age dependency ratio drops, leading to lower budget-balancing tax rates and higher consumption over the life cycle. In contrast, childcare and education subsidies are less cost-effective in boosting fertility, but they reduce income inequality and raise intergenerational mobility.

Work in Progress

Teacher Selection and the Dynamics of Inequality: An Analytical Framework

How does teacher selection affect the dynamics of inequality? In a model with occupation choice and child investments, I propose a feedback mechanism between teacher selection and economy-wide human capital dispersion where (1) heterogeneities in human capital amplify the selection effects on teacher quality, and (2) teacher quality affects the degree of heterogeneity itself through endogenous human capital formation. I use evidence on how duty-to-bargain laws affect the teacher labor market and children's outcomes to identify the model. The results indicate that this feedback mechanism results in long-run effects of teacher selection that are much larger than short-run ones. In counterfactuals, I find that lowering the returns to human capital among teachers has large spillover effects, raising income inequality among non-teachers and reducing intergenerational mobility.

Trade, Fertility, and Education: The Family Connection Redux

with Ananth Seshadri

Increasing China's Fertility Rate: Policy Tools and Aggregate Outcomes

with Alan Yang

Retirement Age, Fertility, and the Dynamics of Tax Revenues

with Long Hong