Overview
Economist at Indiana University. Works on disability insurance, occupational hazards, and structural models of labor market risk. Lead author of the Michaud et al. (2017) study of vocational demographics and SSDI trends, and co-author with David Wiczer on the structural "disability option" model (2018) showing that occupations bundle correlated health and wage risks.
Key Contributions / Features
- Lead author of Michaud et al. (2017): first paper to decompose SSDI vocational award trends using state-level data, finding demographics explain ≤16.5% of the rise.
- Co-author with Wiczer on the structural disability option model (2018): OLG model with 16 occupations, 5 age groups, and 3 health states; Shapley-Owen decomposition finding secular wage declines explain 24% of pre-2000 SSDI awards and baby-boom aging explains 13% post-2000; business cycles ≈ 0% of awards throughout.
- Documented the SSDI non-employment shadow (1.6–2.5% of working-age population in pipeline) and the vocational awards puzzle (constant rules explain only ~6 pp of 35 pp rise in vocational award share).
- Co-author with Wiczer on earlier structural DI models incorporating occupational hazards (Michaud and Wiczer 2014, 2016).
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