Washington DC-Baltimore Area
I am a public policy and public administration PhD candidate and part-time economist at the US Census Bureau interested in applying thoughtfully selected methodologies to relevant, accessible data to address salient policy questions. Current research interests include urban-area housing policy (with a focus on affordability and anti-displacement interventions), transit, migration, labor, societal re-entry from prison, and various dimensions of inequity.
Dissertation: Topics in Affordable Housing Preservation and Expansion in Widely Housing-Cost-Burdened Areas
• Co-authored an article on historical predictors of successful bus rapid transit systems in large metropolises, forthcoming in Regional Studies and Urban Economics • Co-authored articles on what satellite data can tell us about local housing needs in the Capital area, the implications of Democratic presidential candidates’ proposed policies for the Capital area, and topics in local infrastructure cost estimation in the Capital area • Troubleshot R code for a Fannie Mae funded project on building patterns in the Capital area • Performed various data entry tasks regarding historical use of land plots in DC corridors impacted by the 1968 riots • Revamped appendices and documented data sources for a forthcoming paper on US infrastructure costs • Wrote and maintained documentation for onboarding future RAs
Field: Program Evaluation
I am working on an experimental effort to generate an administrative-record-based count of the US population. My role in the project previously involved data ingestion and exploration in SAS and now involves model selection and implementation as well as data visualization in both SAS and R.
Fall 2016: TA for ECON175 Inequality: Determinants and Policy Remedies (Prof. Ethan Kaplan) Spring 2017: TA for ECON305 Intermediate Macroeconomics (Prof. Martina Copelman) Fall 2017: TA for ECON305 Intermediate Macroeconomics (Prof. Martina Copelman)
The project attempts to capture how a massive, unconditional cash transfer to randomly assigned poor households in Kenya affects enterprises, local public finance and governance, prices, migration, and other outcomes, and how those effects decay or persist over time and space. I conducted data cleaning and analysis, performed survey testing in conjunction with other RAs and the project PIs, and provided advice on methodology, model selection, and intervention metrics.
I supported work estimating the impact of currency unions on bilateral trade between countries, assessing the effect of monetary policy on exchange rates, and exploring the relationship between education trends and productivity growth, among other projects aimed at informing monetary policy. I prepared several presentations on the U.S. and international economic outlook that were delivered to various Boards of Directors within the Federal Reserve System (including LA, SF, and Seattle), as well as the Bank of Mexico. This policy-oriented work included co-authoring a briefing for the SF Fed President on Vietnam's current economic and political landscape. Other tasks included fact-checking speeches, preparing materials to brief the SF Fed president before FOMC meetings, leading weekly RA meetings, training new RAs, and assisting with conferences hosted by the Economic Research department at the SF Fed.