A statement of my research interests can be found here. My current research is below.
Research Papers
"Does Performance Pay Mitigate the Wage Penalty for Overeducated Workers?"
With Kevin Smith of Beloit College
Firms provide performance pay as a tool to attract certain types of workers and incentivize current workers to align their interests with management. This study investigates whether overeducated workers sort into performance pay and if they see an earnings differential when compared to their similarly educated peers. We find that overeducated workers are more likely to sort into positions that offer performance pay using a logit fixed effects model. We also find that overeducated workers earn more than adequately educated workers in the same occupation but earn less than peers with a similar level of education in other occupations. Our findings indicate that performance pay narrows the overeducation wage penalty by roughly one-third but does not eliminate it. Finally, as a robustness check we use an instrumental variable approach in our wage regression, using the percentage of the industry (or occupation) receiving performance pay as the instrument. We find similar results to our primary empirical specification. These findings suggest that performance pay functions as a sorting mechanism that attracts overeducated workers into roles where their greater productivity can be monetized. However, the earnings differentials relative to equally educated peers implies that performance pay does not completely compensate for the mismatch in education, indicating that there are limits to how labor markets reward excess education across occupations and industries.
"Cognitive Ability and College Course Choice"
While there is a substantial literature in economics on the choice of college major, the discipline has yet to examine the choice of college course. Nonetheless, students clearly consider their choice of course to be an important decision, with implications for future earnings and quality of life. Using transcript data from a nationally representative sample of American youth, this work examines the relationship between cognitive ability and the level of a course, the number of courses taken, whether a student takes a course in their major, and the percent of courses overall that the student takes in their major. This work also examines the relationship between these course characteristics, ability, and the student’s grade in the course.
Using a seemingly unrelated regression model, this work finds that there is a positive relationship between cognitive ability and the number of courses a student takes, but this relationship becomes insignificant with the inclusion of controls for year in school, indicating that institutional factors and non-cognitive ability account for a substantial portion of this relationship. Students with higher cognitive ability, students who take more courses, and students who take a larger share of courses in their major receive higher grades.
Linked here.
"Performance Pay and Mental Health: Differences by Pay Scheme", 2026. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/irel.70027
Anxiety and depression contribute to billions of dollars of lost productivity each year. This work is the first to examine the impact of performance pay on self-reported measures of anxiety and depression in either the U.S. or Europe, using typical U.S. survey data. It finds no significant impact of performance pay overall but finds that stock options are associated with decreased rates of anxiety and depression, while bonuses are associated with increased rates of anxiety and depression. The heterogeneity indicates a need for further research into the mechanisms by which performance pay impacts mental health.
Linked here.
"Performance Pay, Gender and Divorce", 2025. Review of Economics of the Household.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-025-09813-1
This work examines the influence of receiving performance pay on the probability that a worker will divorce. Uniquely, it compares two different cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Regression estimates show that, in the older cohort, performance pay decreases the probability of divorce among men and increases it among women. After accounting for the mediating role of household income and wages, there is no direct impact of performance pay on divorce for men but the direct impact for women remains significant. Indeed, this impact remains significant even when accounting for normative gender roles, individual fixed-effects, and the timing of performance pay relative to divorce. In the younger cohort, however, there is no significant impact of performance pay on men or women.
Linked here.
"Locus of Control and Performance Pay: Evidence from U.S. Survey Data", 2024. Labour: Review of Labour Economics and Industrial Relations. Richard Perlman Prize Winner.
DOI: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/labr.12273
This work estimates the relationship between locus of control and performance pay. Using the NLSY79, it uniquely examines different types of performance pay, demonstrating sharp differences. Bivariate probit estimates of receiving locus-sensitive and locus-insensitive performance pay show that moving from one standard deviation more external than the mean to one standard deviation more internal increases the probability of only receiving locus-sensitive performance pay from 9.13% to 11.11%. Moving from one standard deviation more external than the mean to one standard deviation more internal decreases the probability of only receiving locus-insensitive performance pay from 23.79% to 22.53%.
Linked here.
"The Returns to Returning to School", 2024. International Journal of Manpower.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-01-2023-0044
This work estimates the returns to education for workers who pursue additional education after time spent out of school and in the labor force. It expands on previous research by comparing the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the NLSY and by examining both those who remain in the labor force while pursuing additional education and those who drop out. The results indicate a sheepskin effect of approximately 14 percent for those who remain in the labor force and a return of approximately 9 percent to years of additional education for those who drop out of the labor force. This contrasting pattern of returns is robust to expanded specifications, selection effects and a variety of alternative variable and sample definitions. This allows for speculation regarding the differences between the internal labor market faced by those who remain in the labor force to pursue additional education and the external labor market faced by those who drop out of the labor force.
Linked here.
"Locus of Control and Drinking Behaviors"
This work examines the relationship between locus of control and alcohol consumption in the U.S. and finds that workers with an internal locus of control are more likely to drink but binge drink less often. A mediation analysis reveals that wages and education are critical mediators of the relationship between locus of control and drinking, but only education mediates the relationship between locus of control and binge drinking. This combination of results suggests that the decision to drink and the decision to binge drink are fundamentally different.
Linked here.
Undergraduate Theses Supervised
Dhriti Nair and Sandhya Pise, “Does Homeownership Increase Social Capital? Evidence from Beloit, WI ”, 2026.
Other Undergraduate Research
Sandhya Pise, “Variable Elasticity Substitution Of Capital-Energy In India”, Spring 2026.
Richard Montgomery and Harnoor Singh, “Modeling Perceived Risk in Sequential Decision Systems”, Summer 2026.
Works in Progress
“The Wage Implications and Sex Differences of Overeducation: A Cross-Country Comparison Between Germany and the U.S.” With Ole Ulpts of UW - Milwaukee.
“Prison Training, Post-Prison Employment, and Local Labor Markets.” With Matthew Theobald of WI Dept. of Corrections.