I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at Louisiana State University. My research examines how public policy and institutions shape labor market outcomes for workers and families, across both contemporary and historical settings. Ongoing projects span food assistance and labor supply, the long-run effects of education policy, the orphan trains and intergenerational mobility, early career economic opportunity, and the labor market effects of generative AI. I use natural experiments, applied microeconometrics, and structural modeling.
My work has been published in peer-reviewed economics journals and discussed in outlets including the New York Times and Bloomberg. Before joining LSU, I worked at the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Federal Reserve Board, and taught development economics at Johns Hopkins SAIS.
I earned my Ph.D. in Economics and a Certificate in College Teaching from Duke University. Currently, I teach undergraduate and graduate labor economics and introductory microeconomics, for which I recently received the Department of Economics Award for Excellence in Graduate Instruction and the E. J. Ourso College Dean's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.