Welcome!
I am a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Virginia and a research analyst for the Joint Committee on Taxation. My work explores the intersection of public policy, behavior, and inequality, with a particular focus on taxation and retirement policy. Here, you can find my CV, recent research, and contact information. I will join the Joint Committee on Taxation as a full-time economist in 2026.
Outside of research, I enjoy kayaking, playing piano, running, and exploring western Virginia.
CV
Published Works:
“Corporate Behavioral Responses to TCJA for Tax Years 2017-2018”, with Tim Dowd and Christopher Giosa. National Tax Journal 73(4), December, 2020.
Working Papers:
“Automatic Enrollment and Optimal Default Design with Multiple Passive Choices.”
How should policymakers design default policy when passivity extends beyond the default? Using administrative tax records from early-adopting U.S. states, I study optimal default design using state auto-IRA programs, finding persistent increases in retirement saving, with participants retaining their balances even after job separation. However, higher default rates cause many participants to exit default saving and choose a zero saving rate, even when zero saving is an interior choice. Existing models of default design assume a single passive choice, implying divergent optimal policies depending on the behavioral interpretation of default effects. To explain the empirical patterns, I extend existing models by allowing passivity to apply to two competing passive choices: default saving and non-saving. Exploiting variation in auto-IRA default rates within and between state programs, I structurally estimate the model and find that the optimal default rate remains between 2.8% and 3.7% whether frictions reflect real costs or behavioral biases. This stability arises because changes in the default partially reallocate individuals across passive options rather than inducing large shifts toward active choice. Once passivity is not limited to the default, the results imply a narrow range of moderate default rates, even when default effects reflect behavioral biases. In that case, the default acts as a second-best policy that mitigates other distortions to saving behavior.
Snavely Prize for Best Dissertation Proposal, UVA; Snavely Prize for Best 2nd-Year Summer Paper, UVA
Invited Presentations: ICI Seminar Series (scheduled), ASSA Annual Meeting, National Tax Association Annual Meeting, Southern Economic Association Annual Meeting, Joint Committee on Taxation.
Works in Progress:
“Passive Saving, Active Withdrawals: Automatic Enrollment as Working-Life Liquidity Insurance.”
Retirement accounts are designed to discourage early withdrawals and preserve resources for later life, yet withdrawals during the working life are common. This paper asks if retirement account wealth provides beneficial consumption smoothing during working-life periods of low earnings. Using quasi-experimental variation in IRA wealth generated by state auto-IRA programs, I find that each additional dollar of induced IRA wealth increases IRA withdrawals by 36 cents in years with large earnings declines, with no comparable response in normal earnings years. This contrast suggests that induced retirement wealth is used to meet liquidity needs when earnings fall, rather than primarily because individuals regret having saved. Because adverse earnings events are common, the results suggest that a substantial share of the Roth wealth generated by automatic enrollment is used during working life rather than reserved exclusively for retirement. I develop a welfare framework that incorporates this liquidity channel and estimate that, net of offsets, the average working-life liquidity value of each dollar of induced IRA saving is $0.16. These findings imply that evaluations of retirement saving policy should account for the working-life liquidity services provided by retirement account balances.
“Winners and Losers of Employer Stock Ownership Plans,” with Elena Derby and Kathleen Mackie.
Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) are tax-advantaged retirement plans through which firms compensate employees with company stock and transfer ownership to workers. This paper studies the incidence of ESOP adoption across employees and firms. Using Department of Labor Form 5500 filings matched to tax return data, we construct a panel of firms that adopted ESOPs in 2009 or 2010 and compare them to similar non-adopting firms through 2024. We find that ESOP adoption increases wages for incumbent employees but decreases wages for non-incumbent employees, while increasing retirement wealth for all employees. A compensation-accounting exercise that combines wage and retirement effects implies that incumbent employees gain from ESOP adoption, while non-incumbent employees do not. For firms, ESOP adoption reduces tax payments, increases employment, and is associated with higher valuations, with little change in profits per worker. These findings imply that the gains from ESOP adoption are distributed unevenly across worker cohorts. The results for non-incumbent employees are consistent with workers valuing the non-pecuniary benefits of ESOP participation.
Invited presentations: National Tax Association Annual Meeting, Joint Committee on Taxation.