PhD Candidate in Economics, UC San Diego
I am an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of public and development economics. I leverage causal inference and novel data construction to study education policy, political economy, and mechanism design, with a focus on how public institutions shape access, behavior, and accountability.
News
- Presenting at the Development 286 seminar, May 7
Research
Paying for Knowledge
Teacher Certification, Pay, and Workforce Adjustment
Armenia's teacher certification reform ties a large permanent raise to passing a subject exam. This paper asks whether subject knowledge predicts classroom effectiveness, whether crossing the certification threshold changes incumbent performance, and how the reform reshapes the teacher workforce. The central distinction is between screening, incentives, and workforce adjustment.
Details →Bullets to Ballots
War, Bereavement, and Democratic Politics in Armenia
This project studies how wartime loss enters democratic politics at more than one level at once. Using variation from mandatory conscription and the lottery-based draft, it links casualty exposure to turnout and incumbent punishment at the community level, while tracing how household bereavement affects participation. An original survey distinguishes trauma, blame, trust, and security preferences as mechanisms.
Details →The Latency Tax
School Assignment, Congestion, and the Demand for Seats
This project grew out of policy work on school-assignment reform with Armenian education officials. It studies what inefficiencies remain when a centralized platform still works as a live, sequential, timestamp-based system. A single-school, non-ranked process forces families to monitor, cancel, re-apply, and decide under uncertainty. The broader question is what a genuine ranked-choice system would fix.
Details →Conflict, Son Preference, and Demographic Response
How external threat enters household demographic behavior in a low-fertility setting with persistent son preference and widespread ultrasound access.
Public School Choice and Racial Sorting in California
Charter and magnet expansion do not move segregation in the same way. System-grade-year design using California administrative data.
The Value of Information in School Choice
How disclosure and transparency change behavior inside New York City's Deferred Acceptance system. Lottery-number disclosure, strategic reporting, and the design of transparent matching.
Brain Drain, Occupational Sorting, and Return Migration
Using Armenian educational records and LinkedIn to study who leaves, how migrants sort into occupations abroad, and what predicts return.