(with Christine Dobridge and Joanne Hsu)

We estimate the effects of personal income tax decreases on subjective financial well-being and consumer credit outcomes. A plausibly causal design shows that tax decreases in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made survey respondents more likely to say they were ``living comfortably'' financially, with null effects at lower levels of subjective financial well-being. Estimates from a similar design using credit bureau data show that people who had larger tax decreases were modestly more likely to open new accounts, more likely to have higher consumer credit balances, and less likely to have a delinquency. Tax decreases had precisely estimated effects on credit scores that are indistinguishable from zero. Results suggest that tax decreases improve financial well-being in ways not fully proxied by expenditures.

Full text

FEDS Working Paper (2024); CESifo Working Paper (2025)

Submitted

(with Brad Hershbein, Katherine Lim, and Douglas Webber)

Using novel data from the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, we examine how labor market tightness affects workers’ job quality. We estimate that a 10 percent increase in job vacancies not only increases the probability of changing jobs, it yields an 11–18 percent increase in the (unconditional) probability of switching to a better job overall, and one with greater pay and benefits, interest in the work, and advancement opportunities. Because tight labor markets improve both worker pay and job amenities in roughly the same proportion, their benefits to workers are underestimated when based on pay alone.

FEDS Working Paper (2026); CESifo Working Paper (2026)

(with Katherine Lim)

Changes in pay and benefits alone incorrectly predict self-assessed changes in overall job quality 30 percent of the time, according to survey evidence from job changers. Job changers also place more emphasis on their interest in their work than they do on pay and benefits in evaluating whether their new job is better. Parents particularly emphasize work-life balance, and we find some indications that mothers value it more than fathers. Improvements in pay are highly correlated with improvements in other amenities for workers with less education but not for workers with a bachelor's degree or more. The higher positive correlation implies that differences in pay and benefits understate differences in total job quality to a greater degree among workers with less education.

Published version

Working paper PDF

Press: The Economist, Wall Street Journal, BLS Monthly Labor Review

Someone who lives in an economically depressed place was probably born there. Having workers with local ties, who prefer to live in their birthplaces, leads to smaller migration responses in depressed places. Smaller migration responses lead to lower real incomes and make incomes more volatile, a form of hysteresis. Local ties can also persist for generations. Subsidies to economically depressed places cause smaller distortions, since few people want to move there. Subsidies to productive places increase aggregate productivity, since they induce more migration.

Published version

Full text, Online Appendix

Replication package

FEDS Working Paper (2019), FEDS Online Appendix, SocArXiv version

(with Katherine Lim)

Increases in labor force exits during the COVID-19 pandemic were larger for Black women, Latinas, and women living with children. After controlling for detailed job and demographic characteristics, we estimate larger increases in labor force exits among women living with children under age 6 and among lower-earning women living with school-age children. Women of color also had larger increases in labor force exits during the pandemic. A decomposition shows that differences in education and job characteristics explain a large portion of the racial differences in exits. The presence of children also predicted larger increases in exits during the pandemic among Latina and Black women. Overall, results suggest that childcare interruptions led to excess pandemic labor force exits with larger effects for women of color.

Published version

Last working paper

FEDS Working Paper (2021)

Press (selected): The Atlantic

(with Pawel Krolikowski and Patrick Coate)

The earnings of young adults who live in the same neighborhoods as their parents completely recover after a job displacement, unlike the earnings of young adults who live farther away, which permanently decline. Nearby workers appear to benefit from help with childcare since grandmothers are less likely to be employed after their child’s job displacement and since the earnings benefits are concentrated among young adults who have children. The result also suggests that parental employment networks improve earnings. Differences in job search durations, transfers of housing services, and geographic mobility, however, are too small to explain the result.

Published version, pre-print version, replication code

FEDS Working Paper, Cleveland Fed Working Paper

Non-technical summaries: 2018 Economic Commentary, 2017 Economic Commentary

Press (selected): Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Time, Business Insider, MarketWatch

Formerly: Family Ties and Worker Displacement