Research

(Job Market Paper)

In this paper, I ask if donor preferences for giving to local charities create a mismatch between where high-capacity food pantries exist and where food pantry customers live, indicating a greater under-provision of charitable resources where charities are in highest demand. I find that food pantry customers living in high-income, rural neighborhoods live within 20 miles of 40 more food pantries than customers in low-income neighborhoods. Customers in low-income neighborhoods also face more restrictions, such as limits on the number of food pantry visits they are allowed each month. Based on customer behavior, I identify the pantry characteristics that customers value most, including the preferred distribution hours and variety of food offerings. I then use these preferences to show that customers in high-income neighborhoods receive a higher per-visit benefit than customers in low-income neighborhoods. In a counterfactual simulation, I show that redistributing funding to improve pantries in low-income areas increases consumer surplus by 3.3% overall, with a 4-5% increase for customers in the lowest-income neighborhoods, equivalent to nearly one additional meal per visit. [Working paper]

(Reject and resubmit at Health Economics)

This paper examines the relationship between adult healthcare utilization and hydraulic fracturing in Texas's Eagle Ford region. Using a staggered difference-in-differences estimation design, I show that inpatient claims for conditions plausibly related to hydraulic fracturing increase by 2.2 percentage points in zip codes with hydraulic fracturing, relative to zip codes without unconventional drilling activity. Because these effects could be explained by pollution exposure from hydraulic fracturing or compositional changes due to migration or income, I construct a novel dataset that combines public water source information with healthcare claims and oil and natural gas well permit data. Comparing healthcare utilization in counties with hydraulic fracturing within one-kilometer of a public groundwater source to those without hydraulic fracturing nearby their public water source, I find a 2.4 percentage point increase in inpatient healthcare utilization, or about 25 additional claims per quarter, for residents served by affected water systems. These results suggest that the observed increases are unlikely to be driven by migration and instead point to groundwater contamination as a plausible pathway for exposure to unconventional drilling pollution. [Working Paper]