Research
How beliefs and barriers shape economic opportunity.
I study how imperfect information, subjective beliefs, and structural barriers shape investments in education, migration, and work - and how these frictions misallocate talent across people and places.
MacroeconomicsDevelopmentMigrationInformation
Information Frictions in Rural-Urban Migration
with Tasso Adamopoulos
We study the role of information frictions in the low and slow out-migration of workers from rural to urban areas in developing countries. Using panel data from Indonesia, we document that migration flows are highly persistent across space and that current district-level migration is correlated with the incomes of previous migrants from the same districts. Using a difference-in-differences design and exploiting natural disaster events at origin as push-shocks, we show that rural districts with improved internet access exhibit higher migration to urban areas.
We develop a quantitative spatial model of imperfect information with noisy and dispersed information across rural districts about urban earnings opportunities. Our theory features localized social learning, where rural residents learn about urban opportunities from previous migrants from their own districts. We estimate the model using the panel data from Indonesia and identify information frictions using indirect inference, with easily computable second moments in micro-level datasets. We allow for other migration frictions to disentangle the role of information per se.
We find that our theory can account for low aggregate migration and the spatial persistence of migration over time. Information frictions account for about one-third of total migration costs and generate a welfare loss of 7 percent.
EducationLaborGenderInformation
Misbeliefs and Education Decisions by Gender
How much of the gender gap in college completion can be explained by differences in beliefs?
Women now earn more bachelor’s degrees than men across OECD countries, while men are more likely to leave college without completing a degree. This paper studies whether gender differences in subjective beliefs about graduation help explain that pattern. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, I compare individuals’ expected chances of earning a four-year degree with their later enrollment and graduation outcomes.
I find that both women and men overestimate their graduation chances, but men’s beliefs are noisier signals of academic skill. Men also respond more strongly to those less-informative beliefs when making education decisions. I embed these facts in a general-equilibrium education-choice model in which subjective beliefs determine enrollment while skill and effort determine graduation. The framework shows how gendered misbeliefs can generate over-enrollment, dropout, and the misallocation of talent, and provides a basis for evaluating belief-correction policies and their wage and welfare effects.
MigrationSpatial EconomicsDevelopment
Spatial Patterns of Migration in Developing Countries
with Tasso Adamopoulos
LaborGenderMisallocation
Misallocation of Female Talent: The Puzzling Case of Iran
Analyzing how barriers reduce female labor force participation and distort the allocation of talent, with consequences for aggregate economic outcomes.
2020
Liquidity Constraints and Durable/Non-durable Consumption Relationship in Iran
Journal of Planning and Budget. with Majid Einian and Seyed Ahmadreza Jalali-Naini.
2021
Poverty Monitoring in 2020
Ministry of Welfare & Parliament Research Center.
2020
Analysis of Household Expenditures and Income Data 2019: Average Caloric Requirements of Iranian Households
Parliament Research Center.
Academic references
References