About me

I’m an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I’m also an Affiliated Professor at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a Research Affiliate at the Inclusive Economy Lab, and a Principal Investigator on the Open Research Unconditional income Study (ORUS).

I study how new policies, tools, and technologies impact people, labor markets, and cities. The core research questions that my work focuses on are: (1) How do labor market policies and institutions influence workers and firms, (2) How does economic and policy change influence spatial inequality, and (3) How does income affect household behavior and outcomes. My research uses large-scale experiments, novel data collection, and economic models to provide new evidence on these questions.

I received my PhD in economics from MIT in 2017 and my BA from Yale in 2008. Before graduate school, I worked at Innovations for Poverty Action on projects in Peru, the Philippines, Malawi, and Uganda and at The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. I graduated high school from Kalamazoo Loy Norrix and the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center.

I live in Illinois with my wife and three children.