Ph.D. Job Market
2025-26 Job Market Candidates
Rachel Clohan
Areas of Interest: Health Economics, Substance Use, Vulnerable Populations
Job Market Paper: “How to Save a Life? Exploring the Role of Expanded Naloxone Access Amid Rising Opioid Deaths”
JMP Summary
Since 1999, the opioid epidemic has claimed more than 700,000 lives. Despite broadening access to opioid antagonists, a medication that can reverse an opioid overdose, opioid deaths have not decreased in-turn. I show that there is limited evidence that legislation expanding access to opioid antagonists created a moral hazard, and instead, fentanyl and polydrug use prevented this legislation from achieving its intended result.
Advisors: Sara Markowitz (chair), Matt Grennan, Melvin (Doug) Livingston
Justin Eloriaga
Areas of Interest: Monetary Economics, Bayesian Econometrics, Time Series Econometrics
Job Market Paper: "A Narrative for Fed Information Shocks"
JMP Summary
The concept of the Federal Reserve (Fed) Information Effect marks a pivotal shift in how Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements shape the private sector’s perceptions of non-monetary economic fundamentals. Rather than relying on proxy VARs or high-frequency surprises, I identify this effect using narrative sign restrictions that encode historically motivated constraints on key variables around announcements. When the Fed tightens, the restrictions allow the data to reveal episodes where policy actions convey improving fundamentals, producing higher output despite contractionary moves. My analysis documents historical instances where this information channel not only emerges but critically influences macroeconomic dynamics.
Advisors: Juan Rubio Ramirez (chair), Tao Zha, Dan Waggoner, Caroline Fohlin, Elena Pesavento
Jung Jae Kim
Areas of Interest: Financial Economics, Asset Pricing, Market Microstructure
Job Market Paper: "Ownership, Liquidity, and Volatility: The Role of Active and Passive Institutions"
JMP Summary
This paper studies how ownership composition shapes stock return volatility through its interaction with liquidity and information. When the passive share rises, passive funds’ mechanical trading crowds out active capital and reduces incentives to become informed, shrinking the informed sector—especially in illiquid, high–information-cost stocks. A simple model with asset-specific information costs delivers two predictions: (i) volatility increases with the passive share, and (ii) this effect is strongest in microcaps where information is most costly. Using U.S. data from 1980–2022 and decomposing mutual-fund-family holdings into passive and active components, I find that volatility increases are concentrated in illiquid stocks with high passive ownership, while active ownership is neutral to stabilizing. Volatility thus reflects passive flows interacting with a shrinking informed sector in thin markets, not institutional ownership per se.
Advisors: Chris Hansman (chair), Caroline Fohlin, Elena Pesavento
Noah MacDonald
Areas of Interest: Labor Economics, Economic History
Job Market Paper: "The Long-Run Effects of Doxxing: Evidence from the Second Ku Klux Klan"
JMP Summary
This paper presents the first quantitative evidence on the long-run effects of doxxing—the act of publicly releasing someone's personally identifiable information as a form of retaliation. Linking doxxed and unexposed Klan members to the 1900-1940 censuses, I show that being doxxed had no effect on migration patterns, job switching, or occupational prestige through 1940.
Advisors: Maggie E. C. Jones (chair), Caroline Fohlin, Chris Karbownik, Stephen O'Connell