Research
Working Papers
Gender Differences in Remote Learning amid COVID-19: Disruptive Peers and Self-Control (draft available upon request)
A shift to remote and blended learning following pandemic-induced school closures changed the nature of the learning environment for students, leading to changes in the relative importance of educational inputs and their impacts on student outcomes. In this paper, I explore another dimension of achievement growth differences during the pandemic, student gender. Using administrative and parental survey data obtained from a metro-Atlanta school district, I employ the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition and Two-Stage Least Squares methods and exploit the variation in exposure to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic to examine how changes in exposure to historically disruptive peers and gender-based differences in self-control impacted student learning trajectories. I focus on two interesting mechanisms that could potentially explain the widened achievement gap between girls and boys: change in the proportion of historically disruptive peers in classrooms & student's self-control level, proxied by proclivity to rush on exams.
The Effect of Universal Gaming Shutdown Policy in South Korea (draft available upon request)
South Korea, with its fast internet speeds and popularity of gaming among adolescents, has experienced, and continues to face significant challenges associated with gaming disorder and addiction. In response to the growing concerns surrounding gaming disorder and its associated risks - such as sleep deprivation and poor academic performance, the South Korean government introduced a nationwide "gaming shutdown policy" in late 2011, implemented in the beginning of 2012. The policy mandates that children under the age of 16 are prohibited from playing online games between the hours of midnight and 6am. I use 7-year panel data obtained from the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey and employ a difference-in-difference method to explore heterogeneous impact of the policy, based on students' pre-policy gaming pattern. I find that heavy gamers (compared to light gamers) decreased their gaming hours by 26 percent of the pre-policy mean.
Closing the Coverage Gap: The Impact of the ACA Medicaid Expansion on Low-Income Young Adults' Health Insurance (draft available upon request)
Low-income young adults are a vulnerable population with significant healthcare needs. While exposed to several physical and mental health problems, yet they often face barriers to accessing care due to their socioeconomic status. Although the "dependent coverage" provision of the ACA Medicaid expansion in 2010 was intended to enhance health insurance coverage for young adults by extending coverage for dependents aged up to 26, this provision is likely to have a greater impact on young adults in middle- to high-income households since only dependents whose parents with private health insurance coverage could benefit from it. Utilizing the Mach Current Population Survey (CPS), I investigate the impact of the ACA Medicaid expansion on young adults falling in a "coverage gap" by comparing impacts on poor young adults in expansion states and non-expansion states.
Works in progress
Replicating and Extending "Does the Healthcare Educational Market Respond to Short-Run Local Demand?"
Policy Reports
 [Georgia Policy Labs - Metro Atlanta Policy Lab for Education (MAPLE)]
Gender Differences in Remote Learning amid COVID-19 (link)
Student Achievement Growth during the COVID-19 Pandemic (link)