My main research fields of interest are Labour Economics, Development Economics, Behavioral Economics, and Applied Microeconomics. I am particularly passionate about understanding the implications of labour automation on income distribution and labour polarization, and how public policies and technology affect economic inequalities worldwide.
My Master's thesis was about the Welfare Reform's effect on the occupational employment distribution of single mothers in the US. The 1996 US national Welfare Reform was the culmination of statewide welfare reform initiatives (waivers) in the early 1990s. These policies greatly affected single mothers as many directly benefited from cash-transfer programs and were thereafter induced into the labor market. However, many states did not carry the waivers simultaneously, and some did not even implement them. I used data from the Current Population Survey to exploit this staggered timing as a quasi-experimental through an event study framework.
I have had the privilege to work and collaborate with outstanding academics such as Daron Acemoglu (MIT), Stefanie Stantcheva (Harvard University), and Abel Brodeur (University of Ottawa). I voluntarily contacted these economists and they kindly allowed me to assist them in research-related tasks. Likewise, I worked as a Research Assistant for Florian Hoffmann (University of British Columbia) and Anthony Heyes (University of Ottawa), and I have been involved in interesting projects like a paper regarding the regulation of Credit Rating Agencies in Canada and a replication of George Stigler's "The Cost of Subsistence" with Canadian data.
I worked as a research assistant for Dr. Florian Hoffmann on an occupational wage polarization research project. I conducted data analysis, ran regression models, discussed ideas with coauthors from the US Federal Reserve and the University of Toronto, and produced interactive visualizations using R and Stata.
I made use of Linear Programming to do the following 3 tasks: 1) Replicate George Stigler's results in “The Cost of Subsistence”. 2) Determine what are the optimal meals per age and sex group to satisfy the minimum individual nutrient intake determined by Health Canada as of April 15, 2021. 3) Determine what are the optimal meals among a selected number of products (my personal diet) per age and sex group to satisfy the minimum individual nutrient intake determined by Health Canada as of April 15, 2021. I also used prices from Walmart and Sobeys to find out the cost of this diet. This project was pursued in Dr. Tanya Schmah's course MAT4387 at the University of Ottawa.
I worked as a research assistant for Dr. Anthony Heyes on a research project that aims to analyze potential P-hacking in published research papers. My task was to collect data on p-values, t-statistics, and regression coefficients from papers published in the Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Management, and Annals of Tourism Research.
I took a course at the University of Ottawa called “Directed Research” in which I wrote a paper with a senior economist from the Canadian Ministry of Finance on policy recommendations concerning credit rating agencies' regulation in Canada.
I assisted Dr. Abel Brodeur by building a program in Python to web-scrape biographical data on gender, date, and place of birth, marital status, and time in power for all U.S. politicians (living and deceased) for his research on the short and long-run impact of the American Frontier on the empowerment of women.
I was assigned to assist one of Dr. Acemoglu’s Ph.D. students, Jacob Moscona, on a research project that aims to measure labor coercivity in Brazil and India. My role was to collect and process data from the Brazilian Census of Agriculture and Indian National Sample Survey, as well as to look for sources that could be used to quantify the persuasion power that employers exercise to force employees to agree to certain working conditions within the agriculture sector. This is one example of the kind of collaboration I provided: R Shiny App.
I assisted Dr. Stantcheva with several tasks, such as collecting U.S. data on Covid-19 excess deaths at the county level, compiling policies that foster online tertiary education for one of her briefings with President Emmanuel Macron, and researching literature related to relative deprivation of income. This is one example of the kind of collaboration I provided: R Pubs.