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PUBLICATIONS
Blue Collar Booms and American Mortality: Evidence From the Fracking Revolution (with Paul Shaloka). [pdf] Accepted: American Journal of Health Economics
Agricultural Technological Change, Female Earnings, and Fertility: Evidence from Brazil. VoxDev
The Economic Journal [link]
Every Day is Earth Day: Evidence on the Long-term Impact of Environmental Activism (with Daniel Hungerman). AEJ: Applied Economics [link]
Media: Le Monde, Notre Dame News
WORKING PAPERS
Religion and Demography: Papal Influences on Fertility (with Lakshmi Iyer and Paloma Moyano). [Notre Dame Population Analytics Working Paper 2025-001]
Media: Notre Dame News; Crux
How do social norms affect fertility? Examining the visits of Pope John Paul II to 13 Latin American countries, which reinforced Catholic Church teachings, we find positive long term effects on fertility. These are driven by first births and by those residing in a region that the Pope visited. Papal messaging matters: fertility increases more when the Pope mentions marriage or abortions and contraception, and decreases with condemnations of pre-marital sex. Marriages increase with all three messages. Further, the effects are strongest for those who are less likely to be following Church teachings, such as non-Catholic, wealthier, and educated households.
Within the Calculus of Conscious Choice: Industrialization, Religion, and Fertility Decline in Early 1800s France [link]
I examine how religious norms moderated the impact of early industrialization on fertility decline in France. Using plausibly exogenous variation in the adoption of steam engines and mechanized cotton spinning during the First Industrial Revolution, I find that industrialization reduced marital fertility, but only in less religious regions. This decline was driven by increased human capital formation and structural transformation. These findings show that industrialization was a key driver of the fertility transition, but that its early effects were mediated by prevailing social norms. The results underscore the importance of considering both economic incentives and cultural constraints in shaping demographic change.
WORKS IN PROGRESS
​A Pentecostal Ethic? Economic Outcomes from a Randomized Religious Intervention (With David Murphy, Samuel Bird, and Susan Kilonzo). [link]
We study how neo-Pentecostal Christianity influences economic behavior using a randomized control trial in Kisumu, Kenya. Participants attended workshops hosted by either Pentecostal or mainline Christian churches, followed by surveys and incentive-compatible choice experiments to measure altruism and investment behavior. Pentecostal messaging uniquely increased interest-bearing savings among men, intrinsic religiosity among women, and decreased contributions to a communal entrepreneurship fund among both genders relative to those assigned to the control. Further, treatment assignment appears to have decreased the amount of financial transfers received by and given by the respondent. These findings suggest Pentecostalism promotes a culture of individualism at the expense of collectivism and contributes to a growing body of literature by investigating how this rapid and global growth in neo-Pentecostalism may reshape economic behavior.