Beginning in Fall 2026, I will join the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an Assistant Professor in the School of Labor & Employment Relations and Department of Economics. I study labor market issues in developing countries.
I received my PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley in May 2026. Prior to starting my PhD, I worked as a research assistant in the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University and earned a Bachelors of Arts in Arabic and Economics from the University of Georgia.
Please contact me at ibpalmer[at]illinois.edu
Research
Working Papers
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Job Amenities, Adverse Selection, and Women's Labor Supply in Jordan
[JMP]
[+]AbstractIn many settings, women face logistical barriers to working, such as transportation and childcare. Firms could bridge these gaps by offering job amenities like firm-provided transportation, yet these amenities remain rare in developing countries. This paper asks whether adverse selection can help explain why. When workers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for job amenities is negatively correlated with unobserved productivity, offering amenities instead of higher wages can disproportionately attract less productive workers. This dynamic may lead firms to avoid providing amenities even when WTP exceeds cost. This issue is particularly relevant in Jordan, where female employment is low and logistical barriers to work are significant. Working with a Jordanian research firm that exclusively hires female survey enumerators, I combine administrative firm records on worker productivity with a survey eliciting individual level WTP for job amenities such as childcare, transportation, and preferred pay schemes. For all amenities except childcare, the least productive workers have the highest willingness to pay. This negative correlation is particularly large for transportation, and cannot be fully explained by income, location, commuting costs, or any other observable. To assess the empirical magnitude of this adverse selection, I estimate a monopsony model that allows job amenities to increase labor supply and attract workers with different unobserved productivities. Estimates of the model demonstrate that mandating firm-provided transportation while allowing wages to adjust downward would increase employment, due to workers' large WTP for the amenity, but would lower average worker productivity via negative selection. The net effect is a reduction in firm profit, which may explain why the firm does not offer transportation. However, allowing workers to sort between a contract offering a higher wage without transportation and one offering a lower wage with transportation could simultaneously raise profit, employment, and worker welfare. -
Economic and Social Impacts of Entering the Labor Market During a Recession: Evidence from Egypt
[+]AbstractRelatively little is known about the effects of entering the labor market during a recession for young people in developing countries. Using novel, newly digitized historical unemployment rates from Egypt stretching back to 1968, I estimate the long run labor and marriage market effects of entering the labor market during a period of high unemployment. I find effects which reflect the same kind of economic scarring found in high income countries, but which manifest differently in this setting due to the differences in the job ladder. Men experience reductions in employment for 2 years after entry, but the long run effect on employment is positive. This unexpected increase is mostly driven by an increase in self-employment without any employees, often a form of disguised unemployment. Male recession entrants are also less likely to ever have a formal wage work job, an effect which is strongest for college graduates. In terms of family formation, both men and women turning 18 during a recession experience delays in entering marriage. However, there is some suggestive evidence that this benefits women: female recession entrants are more likely to complete secondary education and experience increased decision-making in their marriages. -
Housing Subsidies for Refugees: Experimental Evidence on Life Outcomes and Social Integration in Jordan
Publications
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The Syrian Refugee Life Study: First Glance
[+]AbstractThis paper presents descriptive statistics from the first wave of the Syrian Refugee Life Study (S-RLS), which began in 2020. S-RLS is a longitudinal study that tracks a representative sample of approximately 2,500 registered Syrian refugee households in Jordan. It collects comprehensive data on sociodemographic variables, health and well-being, preferences, social capital, attitudes, and safety and crime perceptions. We use these data to document sociodemographic characteristics of Syrian refugees in Jordan and compare them to representative populations in the 2016 Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey (JLMPS). Our findings point to lags in basic service access, housing quality, and educational attainment for Syrian refugees relative to non-refugees. The impacts of the pandemic may partially explain these disparities. The data also show that most Syrian refugees have not recovered economically after Covid-19 and have larger gender disparities in income, employment, prevalence of child marriage, and gender attitudes than their non-refugee counterparts. Finally, mental health problems were common for Syrian refugees in 2020, with depression indicated among more than 45 per cent of the phone survey sample and 61 per cent of the in-person survey sample.
Works in Progress
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Rationing through Intermittency: Evidence from Water Use in Jordan
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Job Market Information and Refugee Return: Experimental Evidence from Jordan
Pre-PhD Publications
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Can Experiential Games and Improved Risk Coverage Raise Demand for Index Insurance? Evidence from Kenya
[+]AbstractUninsured risk impedes agricultural production, but traditional indemnity insurance is not a viable option for smallholder farmers due tomarket failures.Weather index insurance is often touted as an alternative risk management tool.Demand for weather index insurance, however, has been weak. One possible reason is basis risk, the mismatch between index insurance payouts and individual outcomes. We estimate the impact of two interventions on preferred coverage under a real index insurance product, as revealed through an auction: (a) a reduction in basis risk, and (b) an experiential game that teaches farmers how index insuranceworks, with anemphasis on basis risk.Weshowall farmers demonstrate strong sensitivity to basis risk. The experiential game modestly increased knowledge, and experiential game participants indicate higher levels of preferred insurance coverage. Although offering a lower basis risk insurance product and playing an experiential game both increase preferred coverage in isolation, there is no additional impact of doing both. We adapt a theoretical model of misattribution bias to demonstrate how reference-dependent learning with loss aversion could lead to this unexpected result.