Biography

I am a PhD candidate in applied economics at UCL.

My research sits at the intersection of labour and public economics. I use quantitative methods to study the roles of firms, governments, and skills in shaping inequalities across people and places. My research has been featured in the Financial Times.

I am affiliated with the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), RFBerlin, and the UCL Stone Centre. I am also a consultant at the OECD and previously interned as an economist at Amazon.

You can find my CV here.

Job Market Paper

Trade Disintegration and Local Labour Markets: Evidence from Brexit
With A. Tang and J. Knuf.
Presented at the Econometric Society Asia Meeting 2026.

Abstract

We study the labour market consequences of the largest episode of deep trade disintegration in recent history: Brexit. We develop a unified framework that jointly captures exposure to EU supply chain disruption, reduced export market access, and greater protection from import competition in domestic markets. To estimate the effects of each of these three channels on labour market outcomes, we leverage rich administrative data on firm trade and employment and worker earnings and wages in an exposure event study design. We find that Brexit non-tariff barriers harmed workers by reducing wages by 2% but did not lead to aggregate losses in employment driven primarily by reduced access to EU supply chains. We find little evidence that reduced import competition benefited workers, while the adverse effects of diminished EU export market access were largely mitigated by reorientation towards non-EU countries. Decomposing regional effects into their firm-level components, we show that, despite limited regional employment effects, firms exposed to Brexit through their supply chains experienced substantial employment declines. These losses were offset by the reallocation of employment towards smaller, less productive firms with lower exposure to Brexit.

Working Papers

The Distributional Consequences of Public Pay Caps | Updated draft (submitted)
Presented at the Prime Minister’s Office, SOLE 2026, ESWC 2025, AASLE 2024.

Abstract

We study the distributional consequences of a common post-financial-crisis policy: public-sector pay caps. In the UK, caps limited nominal pay growth to 1% from 2010 to 2017 for public workers earning above £21,000 (15% of employees). Using counterfactual distribution methods, we find larger public wage losses at P90 than P50. The caps reduced the overall P90–P50 gap by 2.3pp by 2019, fully accounting for the observed decline in inequality, while widening gender and regional wage gaps by 0.9pp and 0.4pp. The contemporaneous decline in public-sector employment approximately doubled regional and gender effects to 1.9pp (17.5%) and 0.7pp (9.9%).

Low-wage Work and Labour Market Policies: A European Cross-country Study | Draft (submitted)
With T. Schack, J. Meekes, C. Barreto, S. Carcillo, J. Fluchtmann, A. Hijzen, B. Lochner, and R. Vejlin.

Abstract

We study the incidence, sources, and dynamics of low-wage employment using harmonised linked employer-employee administrative data from Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. We define low-wage employment relative to the country-specific median hourly wage and examine how worker characteristics, firm-specific wage premia, wage progression, and labour market institutions shape outcomes at different parts of the lower wage distribution. Three main findings emerge. First, worker characteristics account for most of the wage gap facing low-wage workers, though firm-specific wage premia matter too, especially at the very bottom, where they are around half as large as the worker component. These firm premia reflect both sorting across industries and pay differences across firms within industries. Second, low-wage employment is at least partly transitory, as workers at the bottom see faster subsequent wage growth and change firms more often. Third, minimum wages and marginal effective tax rates show limited systematic association with wage growth or job-to-job mobility, though higher minimum wages are linked to a smaller share of workers below 70% of the median. These patterns are broadly similar across countries and point to the joint importance of worker skills and access to higher-paying firms for improving low-wage workers’ prospects.

Early Skills, Environments and Lifecycle Profiles of Earnings and Health
With P. Carneiro and S. Cattan.

Abstract

Earnings and health are correlated but imperfectly, so no one variable summarises how a life has gone. We ask whether lifecycle profiles of earnings and health fall into a small number of types. Applying multi-channel sequence analysis to the British 1958 birth cohort, followed from birth to age 50, we classify people by their joint trajectories of employment, earnings, physical health and mental health: five types among men, six among women. The types are nearly ordered, though some in the middle trade earnings against health. One — 5% of men and 9% of women — sits at or near the bottom of every outcome at every age, with employment falling from under 60% at 23 to around 20% at 50, against roughly 90% elsewhere. Membership is substantially predictable from childhood: skills and environments measured by 16 identify 59% of deprived men and 52% of deprived women, rising to 70% and 65% with basic labour-market information at 23.

Technological Innovations and Worker Skills | Draft
With J. Onken and Y. Shen.

Abstract

This paper studies how workers respond to skill-specific technological innovations through investment in training. We construct a novel measure of technological exposure by combining patent texts with O*NET skill descriptors using natural language processing. Linking this measure to UK longitudinal worker data, we find that greater technological exposure increases hourly wages, particularly among highly educated workers and those in non-routine occupations. Exposure also raises participation in training, especially training for future employment opportunities, and increases voluntary employer mobility. We develop a model of multidimensional skill investment under uncertain future skill returns. Higher skill returns provide more resources to pay for training, and allowing training to respond amplifies the output gains from technological change. Greater uncertainty about future skill returns, such as due to the unpredictable labour-market effects of AI, encourages workers to acquire a more balanced set of skills, giving them more flexibility to respond as skill returns change. These findings highlight workers’ proactive investment in skills and pursuit of new employment opportunities as important margins of adjustment to technological innovation.

Works in Progress

Capping Student Outcomes: The Long-Term Consequences of Teacher Pay Restraint

Policy

Who Enters the Public Sector? | IFS | Comment | FT coverage
With C. von Bismarck Osten.

Economic Lessons from 25 Years of Devolution | PolicyWISE & Resolution Foundation | Report
With D. Knight and C. May.