Overview
Economist at SSA's Office of Economic Analysis and Comparative Studies, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics (ORES), Social Security Administration. Works on disability program analysis with a focus on vocational factors in DI eligibility and the causal effects of program receipt on labor supply.
Key Contributions / Features
- Co-authored with Alexander Strand "The Ability of Older Workers with Impairments to Adapt to New Jobs: Changing the Age Criteria for Social Security Disability Insurance" (Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2019, DOI: 10.1002/pam.22134): used the MMS (2013) examiner IV design on SSA administrative data (N = 171,880 for ages 55–56; N = 167,179 for ages 52–53) to estimate the residual work capacity of marginal DI applicants near the age-55 vocational grid threshold. Key findings: (1) DI allowance reduces above-SGA employment by −11.2 pp for ages 55–56 — an upper bound on the share who would work if denied, lower than the −16.6 pp for the full applicant pool in MMS 2013; (2) the difference in work-disincentive effects across the age-55 threshold (−11.2 pp vs. −12.9 pp for ages 52–53) is 1.7 pp and statistically insignificant; (3) the primary effect of the cutoff is on the pathway to allowance — shifting awards from the ALJ stage to the initial DDS stage — not on final allowance rates or labor market outcomes.
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