Funded Research

Our funding interests are organized around the following four drivers of economic growth: macroeconomics and inequality, market structure, the labor market, and human capital and wellbeing. We consider proposals that investigate the consequences of economic inequality, as well as group dimensions of inequality; the causes of inequality to the extent that understanding these causal pathways will help us identify and understand key channels through which inequality may affect growth and stability; and the ways in which public policies affect the relationship between inequality and growth.

Explore the Grants We've Awarded

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Wage and Skills’ Spillover Effects of Million Dollar Projects

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

This project will explore the effect of large-scale business openings subsidized with tax and related incentives to estimate the effect of these public investments on labor markets—not just on wages, but also on the skills demanded by employers post-opening. The author will use data on government subsidized projects from 2013–2019, including manufacturing, distribution centers, headquarters and data centers, as well as runner-up locations for these projects, to help identify the causal effect of the “million-dollar projects.” This research will provide new insights on the spillover effects of public investments when designing place-based policy.

Geospatial Heterogeneity in Inflation: A Market Concentration Story

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

This project will examine whether there are heterogenous inflation rates across the United States. If so, the authors plan to identify which areas face higher rates of inflation and what mechanisms drive the observed differences. More specifically, the authors will use regional Nielsen Retail Scanner data from 2006–2016 to measure food inflation. This project will also analyze the effects of local market concentration on inflation, adding to the evidence base needed to effectively measure the heterogeneous effects of inflation.

Employee Activism: Mobilizing Workers as Corporate Stakeholders

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $50,000

Grant Type: dissertation scholar

This project seeks to understand the scale, scope, and spread of employee activism, workplace protest, and its impact on corporate stock prices in the United States. The author builds on an existing longitudinal dataset—the Dynamics of Collective Action by Stanford University—to understand employee activism and understand its use as an alternative to employees leaving the firm. She then will attempt to understand how employee activism spreads by tracking the occurrence of employee protests across industry or social movement networks. Finally, she examines how employee activism affects the share price of a corporation.

Long Term Own and Dynamic Complementarity Effects of the WIC Program

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

This project will first attempt to find the causal effect of exposure to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children in-utero and in childhood on one’s long-term outcomes. She will utilize a difference-in-difference design to exploit the variation in roll-out of WIC programs by county and evaluate educational attainment and economic self-sufficiency in adulthood. Using a regression discontinuity design, she will also test whether WIC funding was actually distributed to counties in a nonrandom way. In addition, she plans to examine whether and how the effect of WIC exposure is strengthened if one is also exposed to other large-scale public programs such as Head Start or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, contributing to our understanding of the long-run effects of potentially complementary income support programs.

Novel Measurement of Childcare Customer and Worker Flows Enables Novel Evidence on Recent Supply-Side Subsidies

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $70,000

Grant Type: academic

This project will examine the impact of supply-side child care investments on access to and stability of child care, as well as whether investments in child care vary by neighborhood. Utilizing novel mobile phone data, the authors plan to construct “real-time” measures of customer and worker flow, enabling an in-depth exploration of the dynamics of the child care workforce and consumers at a fine geographic scale with high frequency. They will then use this new data, along with data from a Minnesota grant program from the American Rescue Plan, to answer how funds given directly to providers affect the number and demographics of families served. This project will provide new evidence on the effects of investing in the supply of child care as opposed to supporting the demand side through vouchers or other subsidies.

Tracking Hospital Mergers and Understanding Which Markets are Changing

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $55,000

Grant Type: academic

This project will create a database of hospital mergers over the past 40 years. The database will detail the following: where health systems are merging or divesting to understand which areas/people (including demographic differences) are affected; whether that differs between for-profit and nonprofit hospitals; and whether higher-priced hospitals continue to provide higher-quality care. Beyond the dataset construction, the project will map areas with 2+, 3+, and 4+ hospitals and produce descriptive statistics at various geographic levels. The research team will track the growth in health systems that resulted from acquisitions by analyzing whether for-profit health systems were strategically acquiring hospitals in regions with more affluent, privately insured patients. This project will contribute to our understanding of the impacts of hospital mergers on equity, patient access, and quality of care.

Funded research

Human Capital and Wellbeing

How does economic inequality affect the development of human capital, and to what extent do aggregate trends in human capital explain inequality dynamics?

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Funded research

Macroeconomics and Inequality

What are the implications of inequality on the long-term stability of our economy and its growth potential?

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Funded research

Market Structure

Are markets becoming less competitive and, if so, why, and what are the larger implications?

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Funded research

The Labor Market

How does the labor market affect equitable growth? How does inequality in turn affect the labor market?

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