“Missionaries and the Birth of International Development” [Draft (July 2025)][Updated draft is coming soon]
The United States is the world’s leading provider of foreign aid. Is this driven by humanitarian motives or strategic interests? Using the travel routes of Student Volunteer Movement recruiters as an instrument, I document that exposure to American Protestant missionaries played a crucial role in boosting congressional support for major foreign aid bills that initiated the modern era of U.S. development assistance. Missionary influence led church denominations to advocate for aid in congressional testimony and encouraged policymakers to frame it in terms of human dignity rather than strategic interests. Beyond advocacy in Congress, missionaries became key experts on non-Western socities, producing social science research and advising the U.S. government. In the long run, missionary influence contributed to a sustained commitment to global development, reflected in increased Peace Corps participation.
“Industrial Spillovers from Agricultural Processing: Evidence from the Beet Sugar Industry” [Draft (April 2026)] Conditionally accepted at Journal of Urban Economics
This paper investigates the agglomeration spillovers from the beet sugar industry, which was supported by the U.S. government as an industrial policy to encourage rural development during the early twentieth century. To estimate the effects of plant openings, I identify suitable locations for beet sugar plants from a historical trade journal and find that these plant openings had large and long-lasting effects on population and manufacturing activities over one hundred years. The local jobs multiplier was significantly larger in less populated areas, suggesting that low congestion in sparsely settled regions enabled a sizeable impact. The agglomeration spillovers benefited industries not only directly linked through input-output linkages but also extended to broader, less related industries outside the production chain of agricultural processing.
“Beyond Demo Day: Sorting and Value Added in Startup Accelerators” (w/ Deepak Hegde) [NBER WP (April 2026)]
We study who joins startup accelerators, how founders sort across programs, and which accelerators improve startup outcomes. Using a comprehensive sample of about 750,000 U.S. startups linked to 329 accelerators, we adapt the teacher value-added framework from education economics to estimate accelerator value added (AVA) while accounting for sorting. Selection is systematic: observably better ventures are more likely to enter accelerators and to sort into higher-AVA programs. Yet accelerator performance is highly dispersed. Most accelerators have negative value added relative to a no-accelerator benchmark, while a small right tail generates large gains. High-AVA accelerators predict better long-term outcomes, including acquisition, employment, revenue, and valuation, and are also more likely to accelerate the shutdown of weaker ventures. We validate AVA using internal applicant data from a large U.S. non-equity accelerator.
“Estimating the Supply Elasticity of Innovation” [Draft (April 2025)]
Government R&D may pass through to higher scientists' wages rather than an increase in innovation when the labor supply of scientific workforce is inelastic. This paper leverages granular data on scientists’ productivity, wages, and research funding to estimate the impact of government R&D on both inventive output and wages. To identify these effects, I exploit variation in city size driven by universities’ historical ties to defense funding, which influenced the geographic distribution of scientists through the placement of graduates into research-intensive cities. I find that government R&D increases inventive output, particularly among scientists who do not receive funding themselves. The monetary value of increased inventions outweighs the increase in labor costs. While R&D subsidies do lead to higher wages, the results indicate that government investment in research can enhance overall innovation output through the entry of new scientists and subsequent knowledge spillovers, and that the elasticity of innovation with respect to government funding is large at least in the long run.