Research
Job Market Paper
The Economic Incidence of Schedule Unpredictability in Hourly Work
Abstract
Workers in hourly service jobs frequently experience shift cancellations, schedule adjustments, and unpredictable hours, often referred to as 'just-in-time' scheduling. Despite imposing significant costs on workers, we know surprisingly little about the prevalence and costs of this practice. I use a large administrative dataset featuring information on nearly 1 million employees' scheduled and worked hours to first illustrate patterns of schedule unpredictability at thousands of small food and drink and retail businesses across the U.S. I show that baseline schedule unpredictability is widespread, and is the most severe for the lowest-wage and least-tenured workers. Using exogenous weather shocks which are known to diminish consumer demand, I examine how these customer-facing establishments pass risk of slow business days onto workers through unpredictable scheduling. I then leverage the fact that most hourly service workers earn at or near the minimum wage to examine the tradeoff between schedule predictability and wages. Following large exogenous minimum wage increases, schedule unpredictability increases by 20% per week and schedules become even more responsive to weather shocks. This highlights how some of the welfare gains workers realize from a minimum wage may be offset by increased schedule unpredictability.Working Papers
Bureaucracy and Political Bias: Evidence from Floods
With Seung Min Kim
Abstract
We study whether bureaucrats preemptively reflect the executive politician's preferences in their decisions. Combining novel administrative data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with hydrological models, we find that a standard deviation decrease in a county's alignment with the president leads to a 4 percentage point drop in the probability of bureaucrats flagging a county as requiring federal aid following an average-sized flooding event. This bias disappears in the most severe floods. We find evidence suggesting that such biases are significantly reduced when a career civil servant is overseeing the bureaucratic process rather than a political appointee.The Economic Value of Weather Forecasts: A Quantitative Systematic Literature Review
With Manuel Linsenmeier, Marta Talevi, Paolo Avner, Bramka Arga Jafino, and Moussa Sidibe
Abstract
This study systematically reviews the literature that quantifies the economic benefits of weather observations and forecasts in four weather-dependent economic sectors: agriculture, energy, transport, and disaster-risk management. The review covers 175 peer-reviewed journal articles and 15 policy reports. Findings show that the literature is concentrated in high-income countries and most studies use theoretical models, followed by observational and then experimental research designs. Forecast horizons studied, meteorological variables and services, and monetization techniques vary markedly by sector. Estimated benefits even within specific subsectors span several orders of magnitude and broad uncertainty ranges. An econometric meta-analysis suggests that theoretical studies and studies in richer countries tend to report significantly larger values. Barriers that hinder value realization are identified on both the provider and user sides, with inadequate relevance, weak dissemination, and limited ability to act recurring across sectors. Policy reports rely heavily on back-of-the-envelope or recursive benefit-transfer estimates, rather than on the methods and results of the peer-reviewed literature, revealing a science-to-policy gap. These findings suggest substantial socioeconomic potential of hydrometeorological services around the world, but also knowledge gaps that require more valuation studies focusing on low- and middle-income countries, addressing provider- and user-side barriers and employing rigorous empirical valuation methods to complement and validate theoretical models.Works in Progress
Hourly Work and Wildfire Smoke
with Clara Berestycki
Abstract
We examine how hourly workers in service industries respond to the presence of wildfire smoke. While in other sectors of the economy, employees may be able to work from home or take time off under the presence of such hazards, the schedules and hours worked are typically much less flexible for service workers. We find that hours worked decline on days with wildfire smoke present, but only when wildfire smoke is already past levels considered harmful for human health. This differs from previous work showing that people stay home when there is any level of wildfire smoke present. This highlights issues of environmental justice in who is able to stay home as an adaptive measure on a day with high pollution levels.When the Credit Dries Up: Examining the Effect of Water Utility Surcharges on Consumer Credit
With Steve Ramos and Derek Wietelman