Publications
Navigating the Notches: Charity Responses to Ratings, Forthcoming (Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics)
Effects of COVID-19 on the Nonprofit Sector with Stephanie Karol, National Tax Journal 2024
How Do Big Gifts Affect Rival Charities and Their Donors? Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 2021
Who Gives and Who Gets? Tax Policy and the Long-Run Distribution of Philanthropy in the US with Nicolas Duquette. Henry Peter and Giedre Lideikyte-Huber (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Taxation and Philanthropy 2021 (Shortlisted for the Fondation Lombard Odier Prize for Academic Excellence in Philanthropy)
The Teacher Labour Market, Teacher Turnover and Disadvantaged Schools: New Evidence for England with Rebecca Allen and Simon Burgess, Education Economics 2018
Class Size at University with Gervas Huxley, Mike Peacey and Maddy Richardson, Fiscal Studies 2018
Working Papers
The Impact of Sanctioning in the Nonprofit Sector, Revisions Requested (Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization)
Just as in the for-profit sector, enforcement encourages compliance in the nonprofit sector too. This paper studies both donor and nonprofit responses to alleged or confirmed misconduct being investigated by the media or governmental agencies. Using advisory notices published by Charity Navigator, I find no evidence that donors respond to these events, yet charities take steps to improve, albeit temporarily. In particular, spending on program services, as measured by the program service expense ratio, increase by 3 percentage points following the publication of an advisory notice. To offset this increase in program spending, spending on fundraising and administrative expenses decline, although this decline is only temporary, with spending returning to baseline after 3 years. These results help to quantify the value of a crucial accountability tool in the nonprofit sector.
Rags to Rags: The Multi-Generational Effects of Ending Cash Transfers in Victorian Britain with Jon Denton-Schneider
We study the intergenerational impacts of ending cash transfers using the 1834 (``New'') Poor Law, which drastically cut the income support that was provided to 15 percent of the population in England and Wales at a cost of 2 percent of GDP. We show that in 1861, cohorts more exposed to income-support declines in childhood held lower-skilled jobs as adults and had fewer of their children in school. Linking these sons to the 1891 census, we find similar results for them as adults and also for their children, highlighting the importance of accounting for multi-generational effects in cost-benefit analyses of social programs.
Works in Progress
Information in the Nonprofit Sector: What do Donors Value? with Teresa Harrison
Employees in the U.S. Non-Profit Sector with Jakob Brounstein, Sreeraahul Kancherla, Stephanie Karol and Carl McPherson