Research

Publications

  1. Public Payment Mandates and Provider Supply: Evidence from Certified Nurse-Midwives (with Lauren Hoehn-Velasco and Yu-Ting Huang)
    Forthcoming, American Journal of Health Economics
    IZA Discussion Paper 18149 | SSRN | Journal Link

Working Papers

  1. Mental Healthcare Facilities and Mortality: Evidence from Local Access and Insurance Expansion | SSRN
    Status: Under review
Abstract (click to expand)

Do mental health treatment facilities save lives? Using county-level variation in facility openings from County Business Patterns data matched to the universe of U.S. mortality records (1999-2016), I estimate heterogeneity-robust event studies of a county’s first facility: all-cause deaths fall by roughly 3 percent, about 1 percent of deaths in population-weighted per-person terms, with no differential pre-trends. In the full county panel, each additional facility prevents 1.56 deaths per 100,000 residents annually. A cause-of-death decomposition attributes the effect to mental health related deaths and to chronic-disease deaths, with placebo causes unchanged, direct evidence that treatment spills over onto physical health. Medicaid expansion amplifies facility effects, indicating that insurance coverage and treatment infrastructure are complements: facilities in high-uninsurance expansion counties prevent 1.80 all-cause and 0.16 MBD deaths per 100,000. Facilities operate partly by connecting patients to disability benefits and prescription treatment. Conservative estimates imply $11.7 million in annual net benefits per facility.

Awards

  1. 🏆 2026 American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon) Program Chair Award, Mental and Behavioral Health | Award Abstract

  2. 🏆 2026 Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy Award | About the Foundation

  3. 🏆 2025/2026 Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) Dissertation Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison | About IRP

Presentations

Upcoming (2027): - ASSA-NEA Annual Meeting Washington, DC

Past: - AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting, Seattle, WA (Podium Presentation, June 2026) - ASHEcon Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN (June 2026) - NBER Conference on Health and Healthcare Variations across the Population, Cambridge, MA (May 2026) | Watch Presentation - American Economic Association Mentoring Program, Chicago, Illinois (August 2025) - American Society of Health Economists Conference, Nashville, TN (June 2025) - Southern Economic Association Annual Meeting, Tampa, FL (November 2025) - Virtual Economics of Poverty and Policy Seminar (VEPPS) - Atlanta/Athens Health Economists Group, Atlanta, GA (2024-2025) - Atlanta PhD Student Symposium, Atlanta, GA (June 2025) - EconNect Africa JMC Symposium (virtual), November 2025 - Georgia State University Graduate Research Conference, Atlanta, GA (2025)

  1. Unlocking Health Potential: Health Effects of Free Maternal and Child Health Care Program (with Tejendra Singh)
    Status: Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management
    OSF Preprint

  2. Can Higher Education Stimulate Local Economic Development? The Labor Market Impacts of Federal University Expansion in Nigeria (with Godwin Aipoh)
    Status: Revise and Resubmit, Journal of African Economies
    Annenberg EdWorkingPaper | SSRN

  3. The Effect of Online Sports Gambling Laws on Time Use (with Owen Fleming and Tejendra Singh)
    Status: Working paper
    OSF Preprint

    Media: Investopedia, Bipolar & Bipartisan

  4. Health Effects of Ambulance Deserts (with Tejendra Singh)
    Status: Working paper
    OSF Preprint

Work in Progress

  1. Insurance Expansion, Behavioral Responses, and Emergency Medical Infrastructure: Evidence from the ACA

  2. Long Drive to Safety: Health Effects of Losing Access to Stroke Care

  3. Beyond the Prescription: Does Health Insurance Improve Social and Emotional Well-Being?

Pre-Doctoral Publications

  1. Factors influencing choice of healthcare facilities utilisation by rural households in Ogun State, Nigeria (with K. Aboaba, A. Akamo, T. Obalola, O.A. Bankole, A.O. Oladele)
    Agricultura Tropica et Subtropica, 2023
    Paper

  2. Capital Structure and Firm Performance among the listed Agro-Allied Firms in Nigeria (with N. Olasehinde)
    African Journal of Sustainable Development, 2020
    Paper