Economics
PhD Student in Economics
Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington
I am a PhD student in Economics at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. My research focuses on disaster economics and public economics, with complementary work in information economics, regulation, and applied microeconomics.
A central part of my research studies the economic consequences of disasters. With Ilan Noy, I use linked New Zealand administrative data to study residential reallocation following the Christchurch earthquakes, including migration out of and into affected areas, the persistence of relocation, and destination choice. I also study how government implementation capacity and fiscal institutions shape administrative responses and recovery after disasters. Beyond disaster economics, my theoretical work examines endogenous information acquisition and measurement, while another strand studies regulation under selective observability.
Using linked New Zealand administrative data, this research program studies how the Christchurch earthquakes reshaped residential mobility and population reallocation. The project examines migration out of and into affected areas, the persistence of relocation, and where people move after leaving Christchurch. It is designed as a broader research program rather than a single-paper project.
This paper studies whether visible emergency administrative behavior is a reliable signal of underlying government capacity and fiscal resilience. I develop a sequential model in which implementation capacity is accumulated before a disaster, while administrative shortcuts and recovery liabilities are determined afterward, and use precipitation disasters across Chinese prefectures as external administrative stress tests.
This theory paper studies endogenous information acquisition when scarce review capacity is allocated across heterogeneous credit exposures. Better review technology can improve inference under every fixed allocation while inducing a reallocation of review toward less systematically informative exposures, reducing information about the common credit condition.
This project studies regulation when public performance measures observe only a selected subset of economically relevant outcomes. Using New York City ride-hailing data, it examines how completed-service performance can improve while performance across submitted requests deteriorates, and develops a framework for deciding when regulators should escalate from routine public monitoring to richer information review.
School of Economics and Finance
Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington