Wilbur Townsend

I am a labor economist from New Zealand. I am currently a doctoral student at Harvard University, where my research focusses on wage-setting, market design and immigration. I am also interested in networks, deviance, and power relations within the firm. I was raised in Motueka, the Wairarapa and the Catlins.

Doctoral research

Job Matching without Price Discrimination (with Jesse Silbert), 2024.

Predoctoral research

Social Capital I: Measurement and Associations with Economic Mobility (with Raj Chetty, Matthew O. Jackson, Theresa Kuchler, Johannes Stroebel et al.), Nature, 608(7921), 2022.

Social Capital II: Determinants of Economic Connectedness (with Raj Chetty, Matthew O. Jackson, Theresa Kuchler, Johannes Stroebel et al.), Nature, 608(7921), 2022.

Earnings Dynamics and Measurement Error in Matched Survey and Administrative Data (with Dean Hyslop), Journal of Business & Economics Statistics, 138(2), 2020.

Joint Culpability: The Impact of Medical Marijuana Laws on Crime (with Luke Chu), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 159, 2019.

Effects of (Ultra-Fast) Fibre Broadband on Student Achievement (with Arthur Grimes), Information Economics and Policy, 44, 2018.

Ethnic and Economic Determinants of Migrant Location Choice (with Arthur Grimes and Cindy Smart), in New Frontiers in Inter-Regional Migration Research (eds.: Biagi, B., Faggian, A. & Rajbhandari, I), 2018.

The Longer Term Impacts of Job Displacement on Labour Market Outcomes (with Dean Hyslop), The Australian Economic Review, 2018.

Employment Misclassification in Survey and Administrative Reports (with Dean Hyslop), Economics Letters, 155, 2017.