Research

I document that entrepreneurial hours are highly dispersed, and that entrepreneurs who work fewer hours operate smaller and less capitalized businesses. I extend the standard entrepreneur-worker occupational choice model with collateral constraints to include heterogeneous preferences for leisure and complementarity between entrepreneurial hours and hired labor. The model reproduces observed correlation between hours, entrepreneurial size, and assets, and reveals that the welfare impact of credit expansion depends on how entrepreneurs value leisure. Ignoring heterogeneity in leisure preferences overstates average welfare gains by more than 20 percent.

Concerns over growing material use and waste generation have led to increasing policy interventions around product lives (e.g. Sustainable Design or Right-to-Repair legislation). However there is little empirical evidence of the extent to which product lifecycles have changed over time. This paper documents how the lifetimes of household durables, which account for roughly half of all electronic waste, have evolved over the last forty years and investigates underlying drivers. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) and the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) in the United States, we document a shortening of appliance lifespans alongside falling relative prices and declining repair rates. We develop and calibrate a heterogeneous agent model of household repair and replacement decisions to decompose these trends into supply-side (technological depreciation, planned obsolescence) and demand-side (price and income) forces. We find that increased depreciation rates account for roughly half of the overall decline in product lifetimes.

I study how differences in time allocation and preferences influence women’s entry into entrepreneurship and subsequent business growth. Using data from the Current Population Survey and 2007 Survey of Business Owners, I show that married women with children engage in a higher proportion of non-market activities as compared to their single counterparts. This disparity in time allocation contributes to significant variations in economic outcomes, both across genders and within the female demographic. I develop a quantitative model that examines the effects of gender asymmetry in non-market activities on occupational choice and business performance, highlighting the complex relationship between gender, non-market activities, and entrepreneurial outcomes.