Prior to joining the department, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at Duke University. His research interests lie broadly within the fields of Urban and Labor Economics with emphasis on issues related to neighborhood sorting, valuation of neighborhood amenities, education, poverty, and inequality. At the University of Illinois, Chicago, he has taught undergraduate courses in Public Finance and Statistics and Ph.D. courses in Urban Economics, Labor Economics, and Microeconometrics. In addition, he teaches an annual workshop course aimed at introducing graduate students to conducting original research.