Main | Research | Experience | CV

---

Works in Progress

Proactive and Reactive Infrastructure Investment

Maintaining infrastructure requires investment. Faced with uncertain quality degradation, managers choose to invest proactively to prevent failure or reactively to address problems. Using a new dataset on drinking water systems, I estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of infrastructure investment to study how tightening regulatory standards shapes compliance and investment strategies. Simulations show that stricter regulations without financial support increase failures and raise costs. Reactive projects enable timely intervention as systems approach noncompliance, reducing disparities stemming from income and size. Efficiently restoring compliance requires expanded proactive investment to maintain quality and even greater reactive funds to address unexpected failures.

The Commission Paradox: Evidence from Prison Telecommunications with Nathan Miller and Marleen Marra

When an intermediary procures services for end users while receiving a commission from the provider, extracting provider rents can come at the expense of end-user welfare and total surplus. We formalize this commission paradox in a first-score auction model and estimate it using records from 37 state-level prison telecommunications procurements. The estimates confirm the paradox: commissions lower provider rents while raising call rates and reducing surplus. A commission ban reduces average rates from $1.37 to $0.58 per 15-minute call and raises total surplus by $4.45 per inmate-month. Competition raises commission bids rather than rate bids; without commissions, competition lowers rates.

Technology and Market Power in the Cement Industry with Nathan Miller, Matthew Osborne, and Gloria Sheu
Revise and Resubmit at JPE Microeconomics

We examine the evolution of market power in the cement industry over more than four decades using a structural model of procurement. The model matches aggregated outcomes in the data and implies transportation costs, shipping distances, and demand elasticities that are consistent with external sources. We find significant increases in local market concentration, but markups increase only modestly, and real prices do not rise. We attribute these patterns to a technological innovation—the precalciner kiln—that lowered variable costs, increased plants’ capacities and economies of scale, and contributed to an industry shakeout in which many plants closed.

The United States Paid Plasma Industry with Peter Jaworski and Kaitlyn Wilson

The Dynamics of Emissions Pricing and Technology Adoption with Sarah Armitage, Nathan Miller, and Matthew Osborne

Published Work

New Frontiers in Research on Industrial Decarbonization with K. Gillingham, L. Barrage, S. Armitage, D. Burtraw, J. Colmer, L. de Preux, J. Hawkins-Pierot, C. Holt, V. J. Karplus, A. Lofgren, R. Martin, N. Miller, M. Muuls, M. Osborne, E. Severnini, W. Shobe, V. Smirnyagin, T. Stoerk, A. Tsyvinski, K. Wagner, U. J. Wagner, and X. Wu. 2025. Science, 390(6771): 338-340.