Research
Job Market Paper
- Regenerative Agriculture and Farmer Profitability: Modeling Adoption for Scalable Climate Mitigation
Abstract: The climate-mitigation potential of agricultural conservation practices depends in part on whether farmers find them privately profitable. This paper studies the profit motivation for adoption of cover cropping and conservation tillage in Midwestern corn, soybean, and wheat production. I combine farm financial records for 2000–2025 with a machine-learned county-year panel of predicted soil organic carbon (SOC). Using a doubly robust staggered difference-in-differences design, I estimate practice- and crop-specific effects on profitability and soil health. The results reveal a heterogeneous profit premium: estimated net returns increase by $79.40 per acre for corn cover crops and $22.50 for soybean reduced tillage, while most other comparisons vary considerably. Under fixed mineral-soil assumptions, the reduced-tillage SOC difference after 15 years reaches 45.88 and 43.21 tonnes \(CO_2\) ha for corn and soybeans. Scaling these point estimates to national harvested acreage yields illustrative stock equivalents of 1.69 and 1.50 billion tonnes \(CO_2\), respectively. To understand long-run soil capital dynamics, I develop a dynamic structural model linking management, production costs, and insurance to soil-stock accumulation and future returns. Together, the empirical analysis and model distinguish observed private returns from agronomic potential and clarify the intertemporal incentives relevant to conservation policy.
Working Papers
Economic Contribution of Wild Pollinators: An Application of Gross-Ecosystem Product (GEP), joint with Subin Poudel and Lingling Liu. Link
Unintended Consequences of Lockdowns, COVID-19 and the Shadow Pandemic in India. A Reproduction Study of Ravindran and Shah. (Nature Human Behavior, 2023) Link
Outsourcing Education: Experimental Evidence from Liberia. A Replication Study of Romero, Sandefur, and Sandholtz (American Economic Review, 2020) Link
Publications
Environment Papers
The Political Consequences of Resource Scarcity: Targeted Spending in a Water-stressed Democracy. A Replication Study of Mahadevan and Shenoy (Journal of Public Economics, 2023), joint with Matthew Braaksma. World Development Perspective. 2025, 39 (100707). Link
Development Papers
Impact Evaluation of the Darsel Math Personalized Learning Platform in Jordan, joint with Caroline Krafft, Paul Glewwe, Tessa Bold, Abdulhamid Haidar, Paola Giannattasio, and Mojtaba Mahdipour. Journal of Development Economics. Stage 1 Conditionally Accepted. Link
Market Access and Quality Upgrading: Evidence from Four Field Experiments. A Replication Study of Bold et al. (American Economic Review, 2022), joint with Karim Nchare and Pu Sun. Journal of Comments and Replications in Economics. 2024, 3 (2024-2). Link
Cruising Through School: General Equilibrium Effects of Cruise Ship Arrivals on Employment and Education. The American Economist. 2022, 67 (1), 5 – 23. Link
The Impact of Early Childhood Development Interventions on Children’s Health in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials, joint with Pallavi Prabhakar and Ayo Ellis. NHH Dept. of Economics Discussion Paper. 2022, (14/2022). Link
Business Papers
Does Board Gender Diversity and Remuneration Impact Earnings Quality? An Empirical Analysis of Spanish Firms, joint with Paolo Saono, Laura Muro, and Pablo San Martin. Gender in Management: An International Journal. 2024, 39 (1), 18 – 51. Link
Contrasting Incentives for Earnings Management: Board Activity and Board Remuneration in Spanish Firms, joint with Paolo Saono, Laura Muro, and Mauricio Jara-Bertin. ResearchGate Working Paper Series. 2019 (2.2.11103.00163) Link
Labor Papers
Spatial Polarisation. A Replication Study of Cerina et al. (The Economic Journal, 2023) joint with Noah Arman Kouchekinia and Xu Xu Cong. Journal of Applied Econometrics. 2026. Forthcoming. Link
Methodology Papers
Comparing Human-Only, AI-Assisted, and AI-Led Teams on Assessing Research Reproducibility in Quantitative Social Science, joint with Abel Brodeur, David Valenta, Alexandru Marcoci, et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. 2026, 123 (22). Link
Reproducibility and Robustness of Economics and Political Science Research, joint with Abel Brodeur, Derek Mikola, Nikolai Cook, Edward Miguel, et al. Nature. 2026, 652 (8108), 151 – 156. Link
Stata Tip: Consistency and Communication in Team Dofiles, joint with James Allen IV and Hang Yu. SSRN Working Paper Series. 2021, (3965114) Link