I am a Ph.D. student studying economics at Harvard University and an incoming J.D. candidate at Yale Law School.
Before starting my Ph.D., I completed my M.Phil in Economics at Oxford University on the Rhodes Scholarship and worked at the U.S. Treasury Department on the Inflation Reduction Act for Professor Natasha Sarin. I helped develop machine learning methods to measure economic activity in developing countries for the International Monetary Fund.
I graduated from Harvard College in 2021 with a B.A. in History and Economics, and my senior thesis on the intergenerational impact of slavery was featured in the New York Times and the Boston Globe. My archival work on loneliness was featured in the NPR and the Scientific American. I currently work on research related to law and large language models.
Beyond academic research, I write poetry about faith and history. My work was awarded the runner-up prize of the 2024 Kenyon Review Annual Poetry Contest and I was a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts for poetry. I serve as a classroom assistant for the preschool class at Central Square Church.
Law and Economics Research
Working Papers
Textualism, Memory, and History with LLMs
[Draft: November 2024]
Increasing Uptake of Tax Credits using LLMs with RAGs
[Draft: November 2024]
An Intergenerational Biography of Descendants
[New York Times] [Boston Globe]
Published Papers
Expanding Child Care Supply in the United States: The Case for Employer-Based Credits
With Ben Harris
Tax Notes, 2025
[Paper]
Nowcasting and Big Data to Track Economic Activity in Sub-Saharan Africa
With Brandon Buell, Reda Cherif, Hyeon, Jiawen Tang, and Nils Wendt
International Monetary Fund, 2021
Research Affiliations and Fellowships
Harvard Law School Program for Biblical Law and Christian Legal Studies, Daniel Fellow
Harvard Center for History and Economics, Graduate Student Fellow
Harvard Meta-Lab, The Dear Loneliness Archival Project
Poetry
[From 2019-2022, I published under my middle name Jiarong Zhang]
St. Petersburg, Florida, Delta Poetry Review (2024)
My Mother's American Reincarnation Myth, The Kenyon Review (2024)
[Runner-Up Prize for the 2024 Annual Poetry Context, judged by Pádraig Ó Tuama]
Images from the Clockback Badlands, The American Oxonian (2023)
Child, I am a small animal in the godhead ravine, Wu, The Tupelo Quarterly (2021)
American Deathbed, BOAAT Journal (Featured in Palette Poetry and The Voracious Bibliophile) (2021)
Time Without Sleep, Flash Fiction Finalist, Black Warrior Review (2020)
Pantoum, The Harvard Advocate (2019)
Two fiction stories in Track//Four (Nominated for Best of the Net)
Parable, The Kenyon Review, (2017)
Readings and Affiliations
Organized and Hosted Events
Poets in Conversation, A Poetry Reading Series at The Signet Society
2024: Darius Afetat-Peckham, Emma De Lisle, Matt Miller, Talin Tahajian
2023: Tawanda Mulalu, Zoe Hitzig, Imani Davis, Alex Braslavsky
Academy of American Poets College Award Series (2017 Intern)
Performances
Musical Prelude to the Inauguration (Performed with pianist Tony Yike Yang)
Visual Arts and Documentary Photography
From the ages of 12 to 18, I was an apprentice to my neighbor, the classically trained painter Robert K. Semans. While I am not actively pursuing a career in visual arts these days, I am deeply grateful to create and have created these short experimental films, documentary photography, and paintings. I was lucky to be generously awarded by organizations like YoungArts, Scholastic, and the Davidson Foundation, who provided funding and the chance for me to share my artwork in exhibitions at Carnegie Hall, the White House, The Hall of Nations at the Kennedy Center, and the RISD Museum.