Welcome! I am a PhD candidate in Economics at New York University.

I am currently on the 2024-2025 job market.

My research interests are primarily in macroeconomics, with a focus on consumption and inequality. I have also worked on topics in information theory and spatial economics.

Here is my CV.

Contact me via jb7026@nyu.edu.

Job Market Paper

Do Poor Households Pay Higher Markups in Recessions?
( to be presented at 2024 Chicago Fed Rookie Conference )
[ Draft | Slides | AI-generated Short Podcast ]
Poor and rich households differ greatly in the mix of products they consume, with the poor allocating a larger share of their spending to relatively inexpensive goods. Moreover, during recessions, households shift spending toward more affordable goods. In this paper, I study an economy with nonhomothetic preferences and endogenously variable markups that is calibrated to match these patterns. I show that in recessions, producers of low-quality goods gain market power and increase markups because consumers shift spending toward more affordable goods. By contrast, producers of higher-quality goods reduce their markups. Observed changes in the expenditure distribution during the Great Recession led to a 6.8-percentage-point increase in the markups of low-quality goods and a 1.8-percentage-point decline in the markups of high-quality products, considerably increasing real consumption inequality. Embedding this mechanism into a Bewley-Aiyagari-Hugget model, I find redistributive policy interventions, aimed at alleviating inequality, amplify these unequal markup movements. Redistribution to the poor allows lower-quality producers to gain even more market share and to increase markups even further.

Working Papers

Local Concentration, National Concentration, and the Spatial Distribution of Markups
(with Chris Edmond, Virgiliu Midrigan, and Daniel Yi Xu) [ Draft | Slides ]
We study the spatial distribution of production and consumption in a quantitative model with multi-establishment firms, oligopolistic competition, and endogenously variable markups. We calibrate our model to match US Census of Manufactures firm and establishment data and intranational trade flows from the Commodity Flows Survey. We show that spatial frictions can have large aggregate effects, increasing both the aggregate markup and the productivity losses due to misallocation. We then show that a reduction in intranational trade costs, calibrated to match long-run trends in US manufacturing, will increase national sales concentration but decrease local sales concentration. Local markets become more competitive, markups fall, and aggregate productivity rises, despite the increase in national concentration.

Entry under Information-Frictions
(Best Third-Year Paper Award) [ Draft | Slides soon ]
I study the welfare-impact of entry-stage information frictions in the US macroeconomy. The framework for this exercise is a simple Chamberlinian model with heterogenous firms, entry-stage selection, and rigidities in capital adjustments. The severity of information frictions is governed by the precision of a private signal on firm-level fundamentals. Leveraging data on exit rates and capital adjustments among comparatively young establishments, the model is calibrated to US Census of Manufactures and BDS data. I find that a reduction of information frictions over time is consistent with a number of well-documented secular trends: a rise in concentration, an increase in profitability, as well as a decoupling of wage- and productivity-growth. The welfare-gains from a counterfactual elimination of entry-stage information frictions are roughly 10% in consumption-equivalent terms.

Work In Progress

Does a Shrinking Middle Class Lead to Higher Markups?
This paper links the well-documented rise in expenditure inequality over the past decades with the concurrent rise in markups and decline of the labor share. I make this argument using a structural model of firm dynamics with nonhomothetic consumer preferences and oligopolistic product market competition. I calibrate this model to micro data from the Nielsen Consumer Panel and I find that market power is most consequentially disciplined by comparatively price-elastic middle class consumers. A secular rise in inequality leads to a shift of consumers into both tails of the expenditure distribution and therefore a shrinking middle class. As a result, firms become less concerned about losing business from comparatively price-sensitive middle-class consumers and focus on extracting rents from their more price-insensitive customer segments. Markups rise. This secular reduction of product market competition is quantitatively consequential even when accounting for changes in the barriers to entry over time.