Her core research agenda investigates how disasters affect firms, how firms respond, and how government spending mediates disaster recovery. Using confidential microdata from the US Census Bureau, She has shown that, while disasters are destructive, the post-disaster recovery period can see entrepreneurial entry, technology upgrades, and aggregate productivity gains as government spending expands firms’ credit access during rebuilding.
She also investigates how smart technologies expand firms’ data capital, and how that shapes firm performance and R&D, particularly in data-intensive domains such as AI and machine learning. In another strand of her research, She uses survey experiments to study hiring and frictions in labor markets such as information gaps and discrimination.
Her work has been presented at several major conferences and is supported by various competitive grants, including from the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She holds a PhD in sustainable development from Columbia University and a BA in economics with honors from Princeton University. Before starting graduate school, she worked in litigation consulting at Analysis Group.
