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.

Sports Betting Cannibalization: Evidence from Pennsylvania  (with Joseph D. Nedved*)

The repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018 resulted in the rapid introduction of sports betting into many U.S. markets. This study investigates the introduction of sports betting in Pennsylvania. We explore the staggered implementation of sports betting across casinos in Pennsylvania to analyze the impact of sports betting on slot gaming and table gaming. Our results show evidence that there is no short-term effect of sports betting on the revenues generated from slot gaming and tabling gaming demand, however, our results show some evidence of complementarity on the longer-term between sports betting and other gaming options. 

Working Papers / Work in Progress

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

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

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

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.