Research

Working Papers

Licensing Barriers to Interstate Mobility: Evidence from Travel Nurses (Job Market Paper)

This paper examines the impact of licensing barriers to interstate mobility on nursing labor markets and health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using county-level CDC data, I exploit spatial variation from the Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) and temporal variation from federal emergency waivers to identify the causal effects of licensing barriers on COVID-19 mortality. Through a Boundary Discontinuity Design, I establish that Non-NLC states reported 7% higher deaths per capita in 2020, despite emergency measures already in place. To establish the mechanism, I use granular data on US travel nurses and their individual licenses. I estimate a structural model of nurse applications that separates the direct disutility of licensing barriers from hospitals’ wage responses. The results reveal that a lack of licensure reduces application probability by 70%, despite the presence of a compensating wage premium and emergency measures. Counterfactual estimates reveal that Non-NLC states suffered the highest loss in applications due to licensing barriers. Together, the findings highlight that interstate licensing barriers constrained the rapid reallocation of critical healthcare labor during the pandemic and that uniform licensing policies like the NLC can enhance labor market responsiveness and improve public health resilience in times of crisis.

Accountability and Access: The Impact of School Quality Grades on Student Transfers and Voucher Uptake
with Esteban Aucejo and Alex Toy

This project examines how school letter grades shape students’ school choice decisions and voucher uptake in Arizona. Using student-level data from the Arizona Department of Education, we examine how publicly available measures of school quality influence whether students transfer to other schools and how these decisions changed after Arizona expanded its Empowerment Scholarship Account program into a universal voucher system. This policy shift made public funds broadly available for education-related expenses, creating a unique setting to study how families respond to both school quality information and expanded school choice policy. Using a regression discontinuity design around school grade cutoffs, we identify the causal impact of higher quality ratings on student transfers and voucher take-up. The project also uses granular demographic, test score, and school accountability data to separate baseline student sorting patterns from the direct effects of voucher expansion. Early evidence suggests that school ratings play a meaningful role in shaping family decisions, with students showing a greater willingness to leave lower-rated schools.