Welcome! 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:

Email: matthew_pecenco at brown dot edu

CV


Working papers

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)

Opportunities and Entrepreneurship: Evidence on Advanced Labor Market Experience (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)

Entry and Exit in School Choice Markets (with Ricardo Fonseca, Bobak Pakzad-Hurson)

Labor Disutility in a Warmer World: The Impact of Climate Change on the Global Workforce (with Rode et. al)

Publications

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

Accepted, Econometrica [Non-technical Summary]

Customer Discrimination in the Workplace: Evidence from Online Sales (with Erin Kelley, Gregory Lane, and Edward Rubin)

Forthcoming, Journal of Labor Economics (2026) [Ungated version]

The Effect of Incarceration on Mortality (with Samuel Norris and Jeffrey Weaver)

Review of Economics and Statistics (2024) [Ungated version]

The Effects of Parental and Sibling Incarceration: Evidence from Ohio (with Samuel Norris and Jeffrey Weaver)

American Economic Review (2021) [Ungated version] [Non-technical Summary]