Research

Publications

"Closing Ranks: Organized Labor and Immigration"
Conditionally Accepted, Journal of Political Economy
[PDF] [SSRN] [CESifo WP]

Featured in: VoxEU, ProMarket

This paper shows that immigration fostered the emergence of American organized labor. I digitize archival records to assemble the first county-level dataset on historical U.S. unionization and use a shift-share instrument to isolate plausibly exogenous labor supply shocks induced by immigration, between 1900 and 1920. Counties with higher immigration experienced increases in union presence and membership. These effects were more pronounced among skilled workers, particularly in counties more exposed to immigrant labor competition, and in areas with more negative attitudes toward immigrants. The evidence is consistent with existing workers unionizing in response to immigration, driven by economic and social motivations.

"Essays in Labor Economics, Political Economy, and Economic History” [PDF]
Journal of Economic History, 2025, 85(2), 549-554.
Dissertation summary. Finalist of the 2024 Allan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation in American Economic History (Economic History Association).

Working Papers

"The Impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act on the Economic Development of the Western U.S." (with Joe Long, Nancy Qian, and Marco Tabellini) 
[PDF] [NBER WP] [CEPR DP]

Media coverage: The New Yorker, NPR ("All Things Considered"), NPR ("The Indicator"), NPR ("Planet Money"), Forbes, Bloomberg ("BusinessWeek Daily"), Bloomberg ("New Economy")
Featured in: NBER ("The Digest"), VoxEU, Harvard Business School ("Working Knowledge"), Cato Institute, Hoover Institution, Hoover Institution ("Economics, Applied"), Reason, Macro Roundup

This paper investigates the economic consequences of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned immigration from China. The Act reduced the number of Chinese workers of all skill levels living in the United States. It also reduced the labor supply and the quality of jobs held by white and U.S.-born workers, the intended beneficiaries of the Act, and reduced manufacturing output. The results suggest that the Chinese Exclusion Act slowed economic growth in western states until at least 1940.

"Political Appointments, Careers, and Performance in the Public Sector: Evidence from U.S. Federal Judges" (with Massimo Pulejo)
[draft available upon request]

This paper studies the dynamic effects of political appointments on the careers and performance of civil servants. We focus on U.S. federal judges, who are nominated by the President on the recommendation of their home-state senators. Leveraging a novel individual-level dataset linking judges and senators over more than two centuries (1789-2019), we employ difference-in-differences and event-study designs to compare judges whose recommending senators have left office to those whose have not. Following a recommender's exit, judicial performance declines: judges author fewer and lower-quality opinions, accumulate a larger backlog of civil cases, and see more of their decisions reversed on appeal. The main channel is an erosion of career prospects: once their recommenders leave, district court judges become markedly less likely to be promoted to higher courts. These findings show that political appointments shape the performance of civil servants well beyond the selection stage, with consequences that persist and compound throughout their careers.

Selected Work in Progress

“The Economic Effects of Public Hiring Constraints”
(with Maria Carreri, Edoardo Di Porto, Edoardo Teso, and Silvia Vannutelli)

Project made possible thanks to the Visitinps Scholars program, granting access to the universe of Italian Social Security Data.   

"Policy Voting and the New Deal Realignment"
(with Stefano Gagliarducci, Hayley Manges, James Snyder, and Marco Tabellini)