Selected Papers

Conversion Therapy Bans, Suicidality, and Mental Health

(job market paper: most recent draft here.)

This paper provides the first causal evidence of the effect of state-level, statutory bans on conversion therapy (also called Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression Change Efforts, or SOGIECE). Leveraging variation by state and year in statutory bans on conversion therapy for minors, I estimate a series of treatment-timing robust difference-in-differences models and show that these bans lead to modest reductions in deaths by suicide and improvements in self-reported mental health, mostly driven by young men under the age of 25. These estimates are consistent with suggestive evidence from Google trends data that show these bans also led to lower search intensity for consumer-related conversion therapy terms. Taken together, these results imply that conversion therapy bans are a common-sense, low-cost mechanism to save lives and improve mental health among some of the most at-risk groups while being unlikely to have negative economic effects.

Same-Sex Marriage and Employer Choices about Domestic Partner Benefits

(with Kitt Carpenter and Thomas Hegland—revise and resubmit at American Journal of Health Economics)

We provide the first evidence on employer health insurance decisions regarding same-sex domestic partner (SSDP) benefits before and after nationwide legal same-sex marriage (SSM) was adopted in the United States in Obergefell vs. Hodges (2015). Using rich microdata on over 250,000 establishments from the 2013-19 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey – Insurance Component (MEPS-IC), we show that private employers were 7 percentage points more likely to offer SSDP benefits than different-sex domestic partner (DSDP) benefits prior to 2015. After Obergefell, however, these employers significantly reduced SSDP benefits back to the rate at which they offer DSDP benefits. This effect is entirely driven by large private employers; there were no similar effects for public employers or small private employers. Interestingly, there was no differential reduction of SSDP benefits in states that had not legalized SSM prior to 2015 (for whom Obergefell was more of a binding treatment) compared to states that had adopted SSM before Obergefell. Our results are the first to document dynamic trends in SSDP benefit offerings by large private employers and suggest the importance of national (in addition to local) norms in these decisions.

Teaching Controversial and Contemporary Topics in Economics Using a Jigsaw Literature Review Activity

(joint with Patrick Button, Augustine Denteh, Elliot Isaac, LaPorchia Collins, Monica Garcia-Perez, and Engy Ziedan)

Most economics courses are still taught using traditional lecture; and, despite gaps in textbook coverage of research developments in empirical economics, most economics courses do not incorporate outside readings. To address these two pedagogical shortfalls, we present a “jigsaw literature review” cooperative learning activity. Our jigsaw activity requires that students work together in small groups. We designed our jigsaw to guide students through formulating a position by synthesizing key ideas from academic readings with diverse perspectives on a common topic or research question (e.g., does the minimum wage increase unemployment?). We provide detailed guidance on conducting the activity in upper-level economics courses based on our experiences while teaching labor economics, public economics, urban economics, and econometrics. We then use anonymous surveys to assess students’ perceptions regarding the usefulness of our jigsaw literature review. Overall, our jigsaw literature review is associated with increases in students’ self-efficacy regarding class discussions and group work. We argue that our activity provides a meaningful way to integrate recent research findings, policy topics, and diversity issues while promoting student-student interactions. For ease of implementation, we provide sample course materials, including prompts and additional teaching notes.

(Out now in the Journal of Economic Education. Read the pre-print version here.)