He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2007 and holds a Masters degree in Public Policy from the Ford School of Public Policy along with a Bachelors degree in Political Science from Reed College. He is the 2007 winner of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research dissertation prize and was chosen as a participant in the 2007 Review of Economic Studies European Tour and the 2008 Frontiers of Econometrics conference in Japan.