Differences between nonprofit and for-profit hospitals within the private US hospital market have been a matter of longstanding theoretical and empirical interest in economics and are the subject of much policy debate. Despite this, few prior works take a causal approach to examining the difference in quality of care between these hospital types. I apply an instrumental variables strategy based on ambulance preferences for individual hospitals (Doyle et al. 2015) to mitigate patient selection into hospital types. I find that for-profit hospitals offer slightly worse care (5.7% higher readmissions) and cause patients to experience higher costs (6.7%). These effects are not attenuated over time. Higher costs are likely driven in part by higher treatment intensity in the form of more frequent inpatient admissions and longer stays.

I assemble a dataset tracking the private equity ownership of hospitals in the US between 2002-2014. I will use this data, in combination with Medicare claims data, to understand the impacts of private equity ownership of hospitals on qualtiy of care. The empirical approach will harness ambulance preferences for hospitals (Doyle et al., 2015) to instrument for the onwership of the destination hospital of ambulance rides.

In order to ultimately be matched with specialist healthcare providers who are the best fit for them, patients may have to undergo a search process that involves switching providers. We examine the impacts of vertical integration between primary care providers and specialist providers, whether in hospital or practice settings, on the likelihood that diabetes patients switch endocrinologists. Vertical integration may make it easier for patients to find the right endocrinologists by initially creating higher-value matches (less switching). On the other hand, vertical integration may make it harder by inducing referrals by primary care providers to integrated endocrinologists who may not be the best fit (more switching). We implement two-way fixed-effects designs to examine the relationship between vertical integration and the likelihood of seeing and switching providers. Preliminary results suggest that patients with vertically-integrated primary care providers are more likely to see and switch endocrinologists. Next steps involve exploring the relationship between switching and health outcomes, as well as examining mechanisms for results so far.

A series of school finance reform policies in the late 1900s aimed to reduce educational inequalities across schools. Third-wave school finance reform policies implemented funding changes that were intended to address inequalities in educational outcomes. Prior work (Rothstein and Schanzenbach, 2022) finds that these policies improved educational and labor market outcomes. We examine the relationship between third-wave school finance reform policies and maternal and infant outcomes. Estimates from an event-study design suggest that these policies did not impact maternal and infant outcomes. For several outcomes, the confidence intervals include effect sizes comparable to those estimated for other education policies and related treatments or other economically meaningful effects.

I was a teaching assistant for the following undergraduate courses:

• Introduction to Macroeconomics
• Introduction to Microeconomics
• Industrial Organization
• International Trade

I received the Northwestern Economics Department Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award in 2022 and 2024.

I was a teaching assistant and grader for the following MBA courses:

• Marketing Strategy - Teaching Assistant: Full-time MBA, Executive MBA, Corporate Education Programs
• Healthcare Strategy - Grader: Full-time MBA Programs