Working in Progress

Papers Under Review

Localization Economies and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Football Teams in São Paulo, Brazil (with Brad Humphreys) [WP Link]

Agglomeration economies clearly affect firms in urban areas. Interestingly, the existing literature on outcomes in professional sports largely ignores localization economies. We explore the variation in team productivity and the agglomeration of teams across leagues and cities in Campeonato Paulista an annual football competition played by teams in São Paulo state in Brazil. Our results show that localization and urbanization positively affect team success. These results help to shed more light on why teams in larger cities continuously enjoy more success than those isolated in smaller markets.

The Effects of Dollar General Opening on Next Door Firms (with Amelia Biehl and Juan Sayago) [WP Link]

The 17,000th Dollar General store opened in 2020, as the company, which has locations in 46 states, added 1,000 new stores in 14 months. Dollar General is a low-cost retailer that makes shopping convenient by utilizing small stores, rather than following the traditional big box approach. Using the National Establishment Time Series dataset (NETS) for the state of Florida between 1990 and 2019, we use the difference in timing of Dollar General openings to investigate its effect on small businesses nearby. Specifically, we quantify the effects on nearby firm revenue, employment, and likelihood of exit. The unique nature of the NETS data allows us to focus on the impacts of businesses in narrower setting and determine a treatment group of firms within 0.5-mile radius, rather than using pre-defined geo-political boundaries. Our results suggest Dollar General can drive some firms out of business but provide positive spillovers in terms of revenues and employment for the ones that survive. These results are heterogenous across industries and retail subgroups.

Differential Effects of Enrollment in Online Classes on Graduation Rates (with James Higgins*)

This study examines the impact of online enrollment on undergraduate graduation rates across various demographic groups. Utilizing data from the Integrated Post-secondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and U.S. Census Bureau from 2012 to 2018, we document the heterogeneous effects of online enrollment on graduation rates in the United States. Our results show that graduation rates are not affected by the simple offering of classes but by the intake amount. In particular, our results suggest that women, White and Asian student population benefit the most from this modality. The results underscore the need for higher education institutions to consider the diverse impacts of online learning modalities on different student demographics.

Do Different Natural Disasters Shape State Regulations? (with Christopher Campbell*)

This study delves into the relationship between natural disasters and state-level regulations in the United States. We posit that disasters are associated with changing regulations. Natural disasters lower the cost for policymakers to introduce new and modify existing regulations which can incentivize opportunistic behavior and logrolling. Using a novel dataset from OpenFEMA and the Mercatus Center, we find that different disasters are associated with distinct regulatory responses. For instance, we conclude that tornadoes are associated with regulatory easing, while fires are associated with regulatory stringency among all state regulations. The economic implications, especially the burden of adhering to more regulations and potential regulations unrelated to natural disasters, highlight the need to examine the link between state regulations and natural disasters.

Covid-19 shocks and Mitigation Policies: an input-output analysis for Southwest Florida (with Caroline Welter*, Daniel Centurião*, and Fernando S. Perobelli)

This article presents a framework for simulating the regional economic impact of crises, exploring the case of the Southwest Florida (SWFL) economy during Covid-19 pandemic, using the hypothetical input-output extraction method and high-frequency public data such as the Pulse Survey. The simulations analyze job losses due to lockdown policies and the effects of mitigation measures, especially stimulus checks and unemployment insurance. Scenario simulations illustrate the quarterly evolution of the SWFL in 2020 and compare it with other high-frequency local indicators of economic activity. The contribution of this study lies in adapting the partial hypothetical method to use publicly available data and applying it to a developed regional economy in a sort of nowcasting impact simulation scenario. The results reveal heterogeneous impacts on industries, with a severe decline in value added during the second quarter of 2020. Mitigation policies offered only a partial recovery for the SWFL economy. Our results are very close to the total effects observed in the data, and provide a detailed overview of the effects by industries, proving to be a powerful analytical framework for policymakers and practitioners to simply implement in times of crisis, such as natural disasters or health crises that consequently affect economic activity.

Tax Incentives and Local Business Ownership: Evidence from the Florida Enterprise Zone Program (with Jamie Pavlik and Juan Sayago) [WP Link]

The effect of place-based policies like enterprise zones has long been debated. Recent literature finds that even if the short-run effects of such policies are positive, the long-run effects tend to dissipate to zero. We focus on why this is the case. We argue that the lack of long-run effects is the failure to attract locally owned small businesses. We study the effects of enterprise zone designation on local business sorting in Florida. Utilizing a regression discontinuity design and establishment level NETS data, we find that enterprise zone designation reduces the likelihood of single-establishment local ownership but it attracts firm headquarters.

Working Papers / Work in Progress

(drafts available upon request)

An Examination of Small Business Resiliency Under Significant Negative Economic Shock (with Zoey Reed-Spitzer*, Tom Smythe, Shelton Weeks)

The Economic Geography of American Artists, Postbellum to World War II (with Sara Mitchel and Lukas Kuld)

The Economics of Hurricane Impacts in Florida (with Rushaine Goulbourne and Amanda Ross)

Identification and Concentration of Same-Sex Households (with Mia Goodnature, Adam Nowak and Patrick Smith)

Unpublished Manuscripts

Does Corruption Impact the Informal-Formal Sector Wage Gap? Evidence from Brazil (with Jamie Bologna) [WP link]

This paper investigates the relationship between political corruption and the informal-formal sector income gap. We focus on a sample of 476 randomly selected municipalities in Brazil, and combine individual level Census data with measures of municipal corruption. We first document the upward pressure corruption puts on the informal-formal income gap. We then utilize a measure of mismanagement by governmental officials as an instrument for corruption to show that these results are robust to plausibly exogenous variation in corruption. When disaggregating the results, we show that the effect of corruption is heterogeneous across industries, with a significant impact on the construction industry in particular.