I am a PhD candidate at the University of Notre Dame. I am a macroeconomist with interests in household finance and the economics of education. My research involves the financing of higher education. Please reach out with any inquiries.
I am on the 2026/2027 job market, and am available for interviews. You can find my CV here.
“Financing Human Capital With Student Aid”
Student aid can expand college access or direct students toward higher-earning fields. I quantify this tradeoff in a life-cycle model in which individuals choose schooling, borrowing, repayment, and a major, trading earnings against field of study preferences. I evaluate reforms to credit access, tuition, grants, and repayment, financing each through taxes. Universal free tuition raises Bachelor attainment and welfare more than STEM-contingent free tuition, with consumption-equivalent gains of 4.1 and 3.4 percent. The field condition generates more STEM graduates, and the two policies produce similar earnings values of human capital. Access to loans remains valuable when tuition is free, and modest loan expansions improve completion with little additional public financing. Benefits also depend on the form of assistance: last-dollar tuition subsidies favor high-resource entrants in percentage welfare terms, whereas flat grants favor those with fewer family resources.
“The Marginal Propensity to Consume Out of Student Debt Relief”
Abstract: I calculate the marginal propensity to consume student debt relief in a quantitative precautionary savings model. The fiscal expense of debt forgiveness is large and immediate, while the benefits free resources from recurring future debt payments, which reduces stimulus effects. By contrast, temporary forbearance that suspends current payments delivers immediate liquidity and produces MPCs close to those of cash transfers. Targeting a one-time transfer to indebted individuals rather than to all individuals raises the MPC by about 50 percent. The MPCs from debt relief are less than one third that of one time cash transfers, and less than one fifth that of cash transfers to indebted individuals, while forbearance nearly matches the effectiveness of transfers to indebted households.
