Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2025); vol. 238, 107231
Previously Agents and Gender Gaps in Negotiation
Abstract: Oftentimes people delegate negotiation to others (i.e., “agents’’) , whether formally or informally. This paper explores the impact of agents on gender differences in negotiation and how this varies with common incentive structures. Using a bargaining experiment with over 2,400 subjects, we find that, absent agents, males make more aggressive demands than females. Introducing agents who negotiate on behalf of the players entirely closes this gap. Although agent incentives affect overall aggressiveness, they do not induce gender gaps. Belief elicitations suggest that this is because agents underestimate reservation prices for both males and females and incorrectly believe that they have the same threshold for rewarding aggressive behavior. While males and females have similar expected outcomes, agents close a risk exposure gap by making proposals across genders that are equally likely to be accepted.
Household Mobility, Networks, and Gentrification of Minority Neighborhoods in the US, with Fernando Ferreira and Benjamin Smith
Journal of Labor Economics (2024); vol. 42, issue S1, pp. S61-S94.
Abstract: We investigate the impact of recent gentrification shocks on minority neighborhoods in the 50 largest US labor markets. We show that household moves from a given neighborhood are concentrated to few destinations with similar minority shares and strong network ties, but those neighborhoods are farther away from downtown. Gentrification affects Black neighborhoods by raising house prices, reducing the proportion of Black households, and increasing the share of movers going to neighborhoods with network ties. However, gentrification has negligible effects on Hispanic neighborhoods. Overall labor market area segregation decreases after a gentrification shock because highly Black neighborhoods become less segregated.
Real Estate Economics (2021); vol. 94, issue S1, pp. 134-168.
Abstract: Home appraisals are produced for millions of residential mortgage transactions each year. In addition to preventing fraudulent transactions, an important benefit of appraisals when they report a value below the contract price is that they help borrowers renegotiate prices with sellers. However, appraised values are rarely below the purchase contract price: Some 30% of appraisals in our sample are exactly at the home price (with less than 10% of them below it). We construct a simple but intuitive model to explain how appraisers’ incentives within the institutional framework that governs mortgage lending lead to information loss in appraisals (i.e., appraisals set equal to the contract price). We also present new empirical findings relevant to the issue of appraisal accuracy, based on analysis of appraisal and contract price data and analysis of mortgage default patterns. One new finding—that the frequency of appraisal equal to contract price increases at the loan-to-value boundaries (notches) typical of mortgage pricing schedules—is, in fact, implied by our model. In addition, consistent with information loss or, more broadly, with the view that appraisals often artificially confirm the contract price, we find that mortgages with appraised value equal to the contract price are more likely to default.
Previously Market Concentration, Labor Quality, and Efficiency: Evidence from Barriers in the Real Estate Industry
Link to most recent version; Link to SSRN
Abstract: Despite comprising only 20% of licensed real estate professionals, brokers control access to the profession and extract rents from every transaction. Exploiting a Texas regulatory reform that raised broker licensing requirements with one year of advance notice, I provide the first causal evidence on brokers' economic role. Using novel administrative licensing and transaction data from three states, I document a 73% anticipatory surge in broker entry that expanded the medium-term broker stock by 8%. The expanded broker pool attracted additional salespeople but did not improve listing outcomes or transaction volume. These findings reveal how licensing reform design reshapes market structure without commensurate efficiency gains.
Abstract: Public pension systems in the United States face growing fiscal pressure, yet little is known about how labor institutions shape the real-time financing of pension obligations. This paper studies contribution coverage — the share of annual benefit payments financed by contemporaneous government and employee contributions — and the role of collective bargaining laws in explaining variation in this measure. To do so, I compile a new Collective Bargaining Laws Database covering all 50 states through 2025, and construct a novel plan-level panel of pension finances spanning 1957 to 2022 using historical Census of Governments records and manually classifying each plan by occupation type. I document that protective-service and teacher plans finance systematically smaller shares of benefits through contemporaneous contributions, particularly when administered locally, while state administration substantially raises coverage for protective-service plans. I find that collective bargaining is associated with gradual increases in contribution coverage, concentrated in government contributions and emerging primarily over long horizons. These effects are driven by state-administered plans, suggesting that collective bargaining amplifies existing institutional frameworks rather than substituting for them.