Working Papers
Distance to Schools and Equal Access in School Choice Systems [paper]
Revision requested, Journal of Public Economics
This paper studies the impact of geography on cross-racial access to schools under school choice systems. Using data from Boston Public Schools, I show that white prekindergarteners are assigned to schools that are rated higher using measures of test-score levels, test-score growth, and race-balanced growth, than Black students; and that cross-race school-rating gaps under choice are no lower than would be generated by a neighborhood assignment rule. I find that longer commutes to high-rated schools reduce access for Black students. Consistent with a more favorable geography; Hispanic students, on the other hand, sort toward high-growth and race-balanced growth schools under choice.
Match Effects and the Gains from Alternative Job Assignments: Evidence from a Teacher Labor Market, with Elton Mykerezi, Aaron Sojourner, and Aradhya Sood [paper] - Updated February 2026
This paper studies the relative importance of teacher match effects and teacher general effectiveness in the production of student learning and quantifies the learning gains attainable from alternative teacher assignments. Because general effectiveness and match effects are typically confounded in observed value-added measures, we develop and estimate a framework that separately identifies each, allowing match quality to vary along both observable student characteristics and unobservable teacher-school dimensions. Using more than a decade of administrative data from a large urban school district, we address endogenous teacher sorting by exploiting quasi-random variation in assignments induced by differences in driving time between teachers and schools. We find that match effects exhibit substantial dispersion, comparable in magnitude to general teacher effectiveness, and that observed sorting patterns are negatively correlated with match quality. Counterfactual assignments that are acceptable to teachers under existing compensation schemes indicate that alternative assignment of teachers while holding student composition fixed can raise average test scores by approximately 0.13 standard deviations, with significant gains driven by unobservable match effects.
Selected Work in Progress
Disentangling School and Peer Effects: A Non-linear Approach with School Lotteries, with Minseon Park and Suk Joon Son
Targeting and Efficiency in the Allocation of Childcare Subsidies, with Minseon Park, Suk Joon Son, and Esperanza Johnson
This project studies the trade-off between efficiency and redistribution in waitlist-based allocation systems applied to Massachusetts’ childcare subsidy program. The program allocates assistance through two mechanisms—vouchers that allow parental choice of providers and direct assignments to specific centers—creating natural variation in the degree of choice families face. Restricting choice may reduce match quality but can improve targeting if families with better outside options self-select out, while also encouraging provider expansion in lower-income areas by stabilizing funding. Using administrative data on all applicants and providers from 2015 to 2019, we quantify how variation in the degree of choice shapes both allocative efficiency and redistribution toward more disadvantaged families.