Working Papers

The Cost of Political Turnover: Firm Lobbying after Legislator Departures with Zhiyang Zhu

Event-study plot: log of one plus other legislators by years relative to a legislator’s departure, for formal exit and first public signal, with confidence bands.

How do firms rebuild political networks when a connected legislator departs? We combine lobbying disclosures with bill-sponsorship and cosponsorship records for 29 deaths and scandal-related resignations in the U.S. Congress during 2009–2018. Using weighted stacked difference-in-differences around the first public signal and formal exit, we find exposed firms broaden their networks and increase lobbying expenditures and participation. New connections span chambers and parties, while rebuilt portfolios diversify across legislative seniority rather than concentrating within the departing member’s close network. Overall, rebuilding entails substantial costs, and evidence links rebuilt networks to legislatively active portfolios, consistent with costly replacement of relationship-specific capital.

The Effect of Abortion Bans on College Decisions with Dana J. Smith and Molly L. Brewer

US state map: women’s share of college enrollment by state, 2023.

After Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, many U.S. states adopted new abortion restrictions. Using IPEDS data and a difference-in-differences design comparing states that adopted bans with states that did not, we examine student enrollment, institutional responses, and faculty hiring. We find no average effects on undergraduate applications or enrollment. Instead, responses concentrate among groups with broader choice sets: women’s graduate enrollment declines, and women’s applicant and graduate shares fall most at selective institutions, where women’s tenure-track hiring also declines. Overall, abortion restrictions generated limited reallocation, with the clearest effects in more selective markets.

Conference Presentations: LAC-PaL 2026, APPAM Annual Meeting 2026 (upcoming)

Connected Workers: Broadband Expansion and Labor Mobilization in China with Ye Jiang, Shamma Adeeb Alam, and Claus C. Pörtner

Event-study plot: coefficient estimates by event time in years around the Broadband China rollout, with confidence intervals.

Can digital communication technologies facilitate worker mobilization? Exploiting the staggered rollout of the Broadband China Program across 117 pilot cities between 2014 and 2016, we use a difference-in-differences design to study whether high-speed internet affects strikes and formal labor disputes in China. Broadband expansion significantly increases both, with effects persisting for up to four years. The increase is concentrated in cities with high pre-reform social media engagement. Individual microdata point to stronger social connectedness among migrant workers. The results suggest that fast internet facilitates labor mobilization by reducing coordination frictions.

Conference Presentations: LACDev 2026, VAE 2026, SEA Annual Meeting 2026 (upcoming)

Social Networks and the Spread of Strikes with Nancy H. Chau and Oleg Firsin Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Population Economics

US county map: number of labor strikes per county, 2021–2024.

US county map: PCI-weighted strike exposure by county.

This paper examines how labor strikes spread through social networks in the United States. Using the Cornell ILR Labor Action Tracker for 2021–2024 and Facebook-based county connectedness measures, we find that exposure to strikes in socially connected counties is strongly associated with local strike incidence. A one-standard-deviation increase in contemporaneous network exposure is associated with about 16% higher expected strike incidence, while lagged exposure is positive but imprecisely estimated. The relationship is strongest within industries and extends to strike scale, measured by the number of participants. We then test whether strike diffusion operates through information discovery or behavioral responses and find stronger evidence for the behavioral channel.

Conference Presentations: Global GLO-JOPE Conference 2025, SOLE 2026

Publications

Raising Grievances to the State: The Political Economic Effects of Anti-Corruption Crackdowns on Labor Activism in China

Journal of Development Economics, Volume 181, 2026 Working Paper Blog Post

Event-study plot: change in strike count by year relative to a city's first corruption inspection.

This paper studies how government actions shape workers’ expected returns to striking by exploiting China’s anti-corruption campaign as a natural experiment. Using a city-level dataset linking corruption inspections to strikes from 2011 to 2020, I show that strike incidents rise sharply after a city’s first high-profile inspection, driven largely by wage arrears from private firms and concentrated in the construction and manufacturing sectors. Strikes also spread through network channels, with later-treated and neighboring cities responding to inspections elsewhere. Evidence indicates that inspections weakened firm–government ties and shifted government attention, raising workers’ expected returns and revealing pre-existing grievances among workers.

Who Bears the Cost of Nationalism? A Spatial Analysis on the Unintended Spillover Effects of Boycotts

Economic Inquiry, Volume 63, Issue 1, pp. 4–46, 2025

Estimated change in employment levels by distance cutoff from Japanese joint ventures, with confidence bands.

Politically motivated boycotts aim to harm the sales of goods associated with foreign rivals, but can also harm the domestic economy if the goods are domestically produced. This paper examines the unintended effects of the 2012 Chinese boycott of Japanese cars on China’s automobile supply chain. By comparing changes in employment between auto parts and non-parts industries located at various distances from Japanese joint ventures (JV), I find that auto parts manufacturers near the Japanese JVs experienced a 10-17% reduction in employment after the boycott.