Research

My research is in applied microeconomics, with particular interests in labor economics, migration, education, conflict, and applied econometrics.

Google Scholar · IZA profile · CEPR profile · St Andrews Research Profile

Current research

• “Robustness? Range Tests for Equality and Equivalence Across Specifications,” CEPR Discussion Paper 21802, July 2026.

  • R package · Stata package

• “Taming of the Zoo: A Practical Practitioner’s Guide to Staggered-Adoption Difference-in-Differences”, in preparation.

• “Shift-Share Instruments and Dynamic Adjustments: The Case of Immigration” (with Joakim Ruist and Jan Stuhler), March 2019, in revision for Journal of Labor Economics.

  • Earlier NBER version · IZA Discussion Paper 11307

• “Sheepskin Effects and Heterogeneous Wage-Setting Behavior: Evidence from Mozambique” (with Sam Jones), Working Paper, April 2023.

Applied econometrics

• “A Cautionary Tale of Evaluating Identifying Assumptions: Did Reality TV Really Cause a Decline in Teenage Childbearing?” (with Theodore J. Joyce and Robert Kaestner), Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 38(2):317-326, April 2020.

  • Earlier IZA version

• “Tweet Sixteen and Pregnant: Missing Links in the Causal Chain from Reality TV to Fertility” (with Theodore J. Joyce and Robert Kaestner), International Journal for Re-Views in Empirical Economics, 2019:1, January 2019.

• “On Measuring and Reducing Selection Bias with a Quasi-Doubly Randomized Preference Trial” (with Theodore J. Joyce, Dahlia K. Remler, Onur Altindag, Stephen D. O'Connell, and Sean Crockett), Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 36(2):438–459, Spring 2017.

  • Earlier NBER version

• “Problems with Instrumental Variables Estimation when the Correlation between the Instruments and the Endogenous Explanatory Variable is Weak” (with John Bound and Regina M. Baker) Journal of the American Statistical Association 90(430):443-450, June 1995.

  • Earlier NBER technical working paper
  • 1970 Census data: use https://www.djaeger.org/data/ak2029.dta
  • 1980 Census data: use https://www.djaeger.org/data/ak3039.dta

• “On the Sensitivity of Return to Schooling Estimates to Estimation Methods, Model Specification, and Influential Outliers if Identification is Weak” (with Juliane Parys), IZA Discussion Paper 3961, January 2009.

Education and labor

• “The Demand for Interns” (with John M. Nunley, R. Alan Seals, Carrie L. Shandra, and Eric C. Wilbrandt), Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 209:372-390 (May 2023).

• “Does Classroom Time Matter?” (with Ted Joyce, Sean Crockett, Onur Altindag, and Stephen D. O’Connell) Economics of Education Review 46:64-77, June 2015.

  • Earlier NBER version

• “Natives, the Foreign-Born, and High School Equivalents: New Evidence on the Returns to the GED” (with Melissa E. Clark) Journal of Population Economics 19(4):769-793, October 2006.

• “Estimating the Returns to Education using the Newest Current Population Survey Education Questions,” Economics Letters 78(3):385-394, March 2003.

• “Do Compulsory School Attendance Laws Alone Explain the Association between Earnings and Quarter of Birth?” (with John Bound) Research in Labor Economics 19:83-108, 2000.

• “Is Job Stability in the United States Falling? Reconciling Trends in the Current Population Survey and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics” (with Ann Huff Stevens) Journal of Labor Economics 17(4):S1-S28, October 1999.

• “Methods for Reconciling the Change in the Educational Attainment Question in the Current Population Survey and Census” Monthly Labor Review 120(8):36-40, August 1997.

• “Reconciling the Old and New Census Bureau Education Questions: Recommendations for Researchers” Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 15(3):300-309, August 1997.

  • Data: use https://www.djaeger.org/data/jaeger_jbes97.dta

• “Degrees Matter: New Evidence on Sheepskin Effects in the Returns to Education” (with Marianne E. Page) Review of Economics and Statistics 78(4):733-740, November 1996.

  • Data: use https://www.djaeger.org/data/jaeger_page.dta

• “Proprietary Higher Education and the Labor Market: What Would We Like to Know?” For-Profit Education Research Project, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, Working Paper 3, November 1999.

• “Peer Effects and Retirement Decisions” (with Mary K. Hamman, Daniela Hochfellner, John M. Nunley, and Christopher J. Ruhm), February 2020.

Immigration and migration

• “Skill Differences and the Effect of Immigrants on the Wages of Natives,” in World Scientific Encyclopaedia of Global Migration, Vol. 1, pp. 11-44, April 2024.

  • Earlier version: Bureau of Labor Statistics Working Paper 273 (1995)

• “The Economic Diversity of Immigration Across the United States” (with Rachel M. Friedberg) in World Scientific Encyclopaedia of Global Migration, Vol. 1, pp. 45-70, April 2024.

  • Earlier version: IZA Discussion Paper 4555 (2009)

• “The Persistence of Self-Employment Across Borders: New Evidence on Legal Immigrants to the United States” (with Randall K.Q. Akee and Konstantinos Tatsiramos) Economics Bulletin 33(1):126-137, January 2013.

• “Direct Evidence on Risk Attitudes and Migration” (with Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huffman, Uwe Sunde, and Holger Bonin) Review of Economics and Statistics 92(3):684-689, August 2010.

  • Earlier IZA version with additional results

• “Green Cards and the Location Choices of Immigrants in the United States, 1971-2000” Research in Labor Economics 27:131-183, 2007.

• “Local Labor Markets, Admission Categories, and Immigrant Location Choice,” 2000.

• “On Immigration and Entrepreneurship” (with Harriet Orcutt Duleep and Peter McHenry), CEPR Discussion Paper 15920, March 2021.

Conflict and political violence

• “Are Drone Strikes Effective in Afghanistan and Pakistan? On the Dynamics of Violence between the United States and the Taliban” (with Zahra Siddique), CESifo Economic Studies, 64(4):667-697, December 2018.

• “Can Militants Use Violence to Win Public Support? Evidence from the Second Intifada” (with Esteban Klor, Sami Miaari, and M. Daniele Paserman) Journal of Conflict Resolution 59(3):528-549, April 2015.

• “The Struggle for Palestinian Hearts and Minds: Violence and Public Opinion in the Second Intifada” (with Esteban Klor, Sami Miaari, and M. Daniele Paserman) Journal of Public Economics 96(3-4):354-368, April 2012.

• “The Shape of Things to Come? On the Dynamics of Suicide Attacks and Targeted Killings” (with M. Daniele Paserman) Quarterly Journal of Political Science 4(4):315-342, December 2009.

• “The Cycle of Violence? An Empirical Analysis of Fatalities in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” (with M. Daniele Paserman) American Economic Review 98(4):1591-1604, September 2008.

• “Israel, the Palestinian Factions, and the Cycle of Violence” (with M. Daniele Paserman) American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 96(2):45-49, May 2006.

Other research

• “The Global COVID-19 Student Survey: First Wave Results” (with Jaime Arellano-Bover, Krzysztof Karbownik, Marta Martínez-Matute, John M. Nunley, R. Alan Seals, Miguel Almunia, Mackenzie Alston, Sascha O. Becker, Pilar Beneito, René Böheim, José E. Boscá, Jessica H. Brown, Simon Chang, Deborah Cobb-Clark, Shooshan Danagoulian, Sandra Donnally, Marissa Eckrote-Nordland, Lídia Farré, Javier Ferri, Margherita Fort, Jane Cooley Fruehwirth, Rebecca Gelding, Allen C. Goodman, Melanie Guldi, Simone Häckl, Janet Hankin, Scott Imberman, Joanna Lahey, Joan Llull, Hani Mansour, Isaac McFarlin, Jaakko Meriläinen, Tove Mörtlund, Martin Nybom, Stephen D. O’Connell, Rupert Sausgruber, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Jan Stuhler, Petra Thiemann, Roel van Veldhuizen, Marianne Wanamaker, and Maria Zhu), Covid Economics: Vetted and Real Time Papers, 79:152-217, 2021.

  • Online appendix (IZA version)
  • IZA Discussion Paper 14419

• “Wine Retail Price Dispersion in the United States: Searching for Expensive Wines?” (with Karl Storchmann) American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 101(3):136-141, May 2011.

• “Coding Geographic Areas Across Census Years: Creating Consistent Definitions of Metropolitan Areas” (with Susanna Loeb, Sarah E. Turner, and John Bound) NBER Working Paper 6772, October 1998.

• “Child Health and Maternal Fasting During Ramadan: An Analysis of Birth Records” (with Onur Altindag and Markus Gehrsitz), November 2019.

Book reviews and comments

• Review of American Wine Economics: An Exploration of the U.S. Wine Industry (James Thornton), Journal of Wine Economics 8(3):357-359 (December 2013).

• “Variability in Punitive Damages: Comment,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 166(1):33-37 (March 2010).

Reports and other publications

• “Nobel economics prize winners showed economists how to turn the real world into their laboratory,” The Conversation, October 2021.

• “What it takes to get an internship,” The Conversation, February 2020.

• “Strike Out” (with Zahra Siddique), Letter to the Editor, Foreign Policy, May/June 2012, 11.

• “The Cycle of Violence and Palestinian Public Opinion” (with M. Daniele Paserman), Vox, https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/cycle-violence-and-palestinian-public-opinion-second-intifada, 10 June 2008.

• “Illegal Immigrants and the Economy,” Letter to the Editor, New York Times, 10 June 2006, A26.

  • Archived copy of my letter
  • Barry Chiswick’s op-ed

• “Replacing the Undocumented Workforce,” Center for American Progress, April 2006.

• “Deporting the Undocumented: A Cost Assessment” (with Rajeev Goyle), Center for American Progress, July 2005.

Data and replication files

Where available, data and replication materials are linked directly beneath the relevant paper. Older datasets remain available from the data archive.