Working Papers
"Occupational Choice, Human Capital Formation and Life-cycle Earnings", Draft
Abstract: This paper examines the interaction between occupational choice and human capital formation in shaping life-cycle earnings. I focus on occupations’ technology exposure, measured as the intensity of information technology usage, and empirically demonstrate its impact on productivity. I develop a life-cycle model with a college decision, human capital investments, occupational choices, and incomplete markets. Results suggest occupational choice incentivizes human capital formation over the life-cycle and hence affects life-cycle earnings. In particular, it contributes to14% of the growth in mean log earnings and 30% of the growth in life-cycle inequality. Furthermore, I evaluate the role of occupational choice on non-linear taxation policies, showing that progressive taxes have larger distortionary effects on earnings growth with endogenous occupational choice.
"College as Human Capital Investments or Tournament: A Macroeconomics Analysis", Draft
Abstract: A college education is commonly viewed as a productive investment in the human capital theory. However, it also serves a competitive purpose to stand out in the job market, like a tournament contest. In this paper, I study the relative importance of these two channels in determining college attendance. I build a general equilibrium life-cycle model with a college decision, human capital investments, and skill allocation. The model’s novelty is that workers are allocated to different occupations based on their relative ranking of human capital, so college education also has a competitive value. Results show that the competitive channel accounts for 31% of college attendance butalso has a positive impact on output. I evaluate the optimal policy of taxation and college subsidies, and find that lowering college subsidies and the progressivity of labor income tax would increase social welfare by 2.3%. The new policy mitigates competition in college education and alleviates negative externalities.
"Life-cycle Skill Premiums across Cohorts", Draft
Abstract: I document and investigate life-cycle profiles of skill premiums across cohorts. My empirical analysis shows that younger cohorts have steeper growth in the skill premium before age 40 but flatter growth after 40. I use a human capital investment model to account for the cross-cohort variation in skill premium profiles. The results indicate that the flattened growth after age 40 is caused by the drop in human capital (of high-skill workers) near the end of the life cycle. Besides, the magnitude of life-cycle growth in the skill premium is mainly driven by the relative skill price, which is the log ratio of wage rates between high-skill workers and low-skill workers.
Work in progress
"Spatial Health: How Socio-Economic Status and Health Behaviors Shape Our Neighborhoods", with Jesus Bueren and Carla Revilla
Abstract: In this paper, we study segregation in health behavior and its welfare implications. We develop a general equilibrium life-cycle model with neighborhood choice and endogenous local spillover effects on education and health behaviors. Using tract-level data from Add Health, we document neighborhood-level smoking externalities and quantify how these local spillovers influence residential sorting. Our preliminary findings suggest that a targeted housing voucher program—aimed at low-income individuals in disadvantaged neighborhoods and designed to promote relocation—can raise college attendance and reduce smoking rates at the aggregate level. Importantly, the welfare gains from reduced smoking and increased life expectancy are comparable in magnitude to those from higher educational attainment.
``Climbing the Skill Ladder and Learning: A Life-Cycle Perspective", with Sujan Bandyopadhyay and Matthew Millington
"Marital Sorting, Joint Labor Supply and the Gender Wage Gap", with Terry Cheung and Mehmet Demir