Governments often regulate industries using policies which fail to account for inflation. Examples include the minimum wage, fuel taxes, and the alternative minimum tax. In a recent working paper (Inflation, Taxation & Market Power), we show that failing to index alcohol taxes kept retail prices low while substantially increasing federal and state tax revenue (and firm profits). Increased alcohol consumption from nominal taxation also increased prevalence of alcohol-attributable diseases such as cancer, cirrhosis, and heart disease, especially among low income, minority, and rural residents as these consumers tend to be more price-sensitive. We find that firms’ strategic pricing amplified cost changes along the supply chain which indicates that market power is an important feature towards understanding and predicting inflation.
I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Georgia. My research uses frontier empirical tools to evaluate industrial policy. My research has been published in leading economic journals including Econometrica, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, and The RAND Journal of Economics. I teach courses on data science and causal machine learning (CausalML) at the undergraduate and MBA level as well as PhD Industrial Organization.
I am currently on-leave and am working as a Principal Economist in the Amazon Web Services central science economics team.
