I am the Orlando Bravo Assistant Professor in the Economics department at Brown University. My research interests are primarily in labor economics, with much of my work focused on crime, development, and education.
Office hours: By appointment (available by email)
Email: matthew_pecenco at brown dot edu
Conviction, Incarceration, and Policy Effects in the Criminal Justice System (with Vishal Kamat and Samuel Norris)
Identification in Multiple Treatment Models under Discrete Variation (with Vishal Kamat and Samuel Norris)
High-Responsibility Work and Firm Creation: Experimental Evidence from the Dominican Republic (with Carlos Schmidt-Padilla and Hamilton Taveras)
Peer Preferences in Centralized School Choice Markets: Theory and Evidence (with Natalie Cox, Ricardo Fonseca, Bobak Pakzad-Hurson)
Reject and Resubmit, Journal of Political EconomyIs Workplace Temperature a Valuable Job Amenity? Implications for Climate Change (with Rode et al.)
Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Political EconomyCustomer Discrimination in the Workplace: Evidence from Online Sales (with Erin Kelley, Gregory Lane, and Edward Rubin)
Journal of Labor Economics (2026) [Online Appendix]The Impact of Incarceration on Employment, Earnings, and Tax Filing (with Andrew Garin, Dmitri Koustas, Carl McPherson, Samuel Norris, Evan K. Rose, Yotam Shem-Tov, and Jeffrey Weaver)
Econometrica (2025) [Online Appendix] [Non-technical Summary]The Effect of Incarceration on Mortality (with Samuel Norris and Jeffrey Weaver)
Review of Economics and Statistics (2024) [Online Appendix]The Effects of Parental and Sibling Incarceration: Evidence from Ohio (with Samuel Norris and Jeffrey Weaver)
American Economic Review (2021) [Online Appendix] [Non-technical Summary]Electoral Competition and Political Rents: Evidence from India (with Sandip Sukhtankar)