Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago Department of Economics

C.V.

Job Market Paper: "Schooling, Marriage, and Male and Female Consumption"

Abstract: A marriage matching model is estimated to quantify the share of returns to education that is realized through marriage. In the model, more educated agents earn higher wages in the labor market, and are more productive in housework. Men and women who marry benefit from the presence of household public goods, complementarities in household production, and the division of labor between spouses. The predictions of the model are matched with NLSY data on sorting in marriage, and data on the allocation of time from the American Time Use Survey. Counterfactual analysis for men and women, suggests that better marital outcomes generate 35 percent of the return to education for women around middle age and 10 percent of the corresponding return for men.

Other Research: "What Causes Positive Sorting on Education in Marriage? Evidence from Hollywood Actors"

Abstract: I collect a new set of data on the marital behavior of Hollywood actors, and use it to study the causes of positive sorting on education in marriage. Actors in Hollywood do not meet their spouses in school, do not appear to earn wages that are correlated with their formal years of schooling, and are unlikely to choose their spouses on the basis of parental wealth. Despite these differences with the overall population, Hollywood actors marry those who have a similar educational background as their own (the correlation coefficient for husband and wife years of schooling in Hollywood couples is 0.35, as opposed to 0.65 for the overall population). The proposed interpretation of this finding, is that a nontrivial fraction of the observed sorting on education in US marriages is caused by factors other than sorting on earnings, sorting on parental wealth, and sorting that is induced by men and women meeting each other in school.