Carolyn Tsao
Postdoctoral Researcher, Microsoft Research
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, The Ohio State University (starting Fall 2026)
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, The Ohio State University (starting Fall 2026)
I am a labor economist. I study how non-wage amenities affect workers' productivity and job choice, with a focus on education and teacher labor markets.
I received my PhD in Economics from Princeton University in 2025.
Research
It's Not (Just) About the Money: Pay and the Value of Working Conditions in Teaching
Awards: Best Paper Award, CESifo Economics of Education Conference 2024
Using a regression kink design and event studies on Kentucky administrative data, I find that teaching offers an approximately $20,000 annual premium over teachers' outside options. Experienced teachers earn a 16% rent over their alternatives, while inexperienced teachers earn no rent.
The Effects of Prohibiting Marriage Bars: The Case of U.S. Teachers
Conditionally Accepted, The Journal of Economic History
Awards: 2024 IPUMS USA Research Award
We study the effects of legislative prohibitions on marriage bars for teachers in the 1930s United States, examining how these policies affected married women's participation in the teaching workforce.
Managers in Public Schools
I examine principal effectiveness using a two-way fixed effects framework. Principal effectiveness explains less outcome variance than teacher effectiveness, but more effective principals are associated with improved student and teacher outcomes.
Feedback Style and Worker Productivity
We analyze the relationship between manager communication tone and engineer productivity using data from the Linux kernel and NLP techniques. Preliminary findings suggest that toxic feedback negatively impacts task completion rates.
Teaching
Coming soon.