Stack of papers / notebook
Research
Econometrics on tax policy and the political economy of peacekeeping.
As team lead at Northeastern, under Prof. Omar Robles, I directed a study of the socioeconomic legacy of the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) on U.S. income disparity, running five econometric specifications across 65 years of U.S. data and an 812-observation OECD panel, then turning the findings into a corrective policy proposal. In a separate CU Boulder internship under Prof. Megan Shannon, I examined why autocracies contribute to UN peacekeeping and found that deployments track strategic self-interest over humanitarian need.
- 65 yrs
- of U.S. tax & income data
- 812
- OECD panel observations
- ~12%
- of the income-gap rise tied to ERTA
Northeastern University · Team lead · Prof. Omar Robles
ERTA and the U.S. income gap
As team lead, I directed a study of the socioeconomic legacy of the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act on U.S. income disparity, running five econometric specifications over 65 years of U.S. tax and income data and an 812-observation panel of 17 OECD economies.
- Specifications: Welch t-tests, Chow and Quandt-Andrews structural-break tests, a six-country OECD placebo test, and a first-differences regression with Newey-West errors.
- The placebo test showed the 1981 structural break was global, not U.S.-specific.
- The first-difference estimate attributes roughly 12% of the rise in income disparity directly to ERTA's rate cuts.
- Presented to Prof. Robles with strongly positive feedback; currently under faculty review.
Team leadership · From findings to policy
Leading the team, and a pivot to policy
I led the team the way Satya Nadella leads: set a clear shared vision, then give people the freedom to decide how to reach it. Balancing full course loads, we produced roughly twenty pages of research in about two months. As the evidence came in, we pivoted the argument from reforming welfare toward implementing a negative income tax, a substantive reframing that the team's creative freedom made possible.
CU Boulder · Research intern · Prof. Megan Shannon
Why autocracies join UN peacekeeping
Selected for a research internship under political science professor Megan Shannon, I synthesized ten years of scholarship and mission-level evidence to explain why non-democratic states contribute troops to UN peacekeeping. The stories point one way: China's and Russia's deployments track strategic self-interest, not humanitarian need.