Job Market Paper

1. The Rise of H-2A: Causal Evidence on Guestworker Substitution for Settled Farm Labor

   Aakansha Jain

   2026

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   The H-2A agricultural guestworker visa program, which enables U.S. farmers to legally hire foreign labor for seasonal farm jobs, grew more than fourfold between 2008 and 2024. Simultaneously, the settled non-citizen workforce that had long supplied the same seasonal farm labor shrank under intensified immigration enforcement. Two thirds of these settled non-citizen agricultural workers in the U.S. lack work authorization. This paper asks whether the decline in settled farm workers caused the rise of the H-2A visa program, and at what rate. Using a panel of 740 commuting zones, I instrument the contemporaneous settled non-citizen share of agricultural labor with its 2000 baseline share interacted with national enforcement shifts. I find that farms hire about one H-2A guestworker for each settled non-citizen worker lost in headcount, replacing roughly three quarters of the lost labor time. Substitution for lost settled workers accounts for about 29 percent of aggregate H-2A growth over the period.

Publications

1. Are College Towns Really Recession Proof?

   R. Manternach, Aakansha Jain, Peter F. Orazem, and L. Soborowicz

   2025

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2. Youth Labor Markets in High- and Low-Income Countries

   Aakansha Jain, Claudio Montenegro, and Peter F. Orazem

   2026

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   Uses a new World Bank database covering 160 countries over three decades to compare how youth in high- and low-income economies divide their time among work, schooling, and neither, and how labor market flexibility, human capital, and the level of economic development shape the transition from school to work.

Working Papers

1. College Wage Premiums in India: Trends and Spatial Decomposition, 1987-2012

   Aakansha Jain

   2025

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   This paper traces the college-versus-high-school earnings gap in India across five waves of the National Sample Survey, 1987-2012, a period when tertiary enrollment nearly tripled. I estimate Mincer wage equations and two-part Cragg models that separate labor-force participation from pay, organized into synthetic birth cohorts. The college premium rose substantially throughout the period for both younger and older workers. Zone-level decompositions, motivated by imperfect substitution between young and old workers, show that the young-old premium gap closed where college supply expanded most and persisted where it did not.

2. An Overview of the 2024 Iowa State University Alumni Survey

   A. Andrade, J. Eyles, Aakansha Jain, K. Kimle, Peter F. Orazem, and 1 more author

   2025

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   Documents the design, sample construction, and descriptive findings of the 2024 Iowa State University alumni survey, a follow-up to the 2008 survey (Jolly, Yu, and Orazem 2009). Covers cohorts graduating from 1982 to 2023, with over 5,000 usable Bachelor’s-degree responses. Reports patterns of entrepreneurship, employment, education, and geographic mobility across 41 years of ISU graduates.

Works in Progress

1. Does Broadband Close the Rural Education Gap?

   Aakansha Jain, Luyi Han, and John V. Winters

   2026

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   Asks whether federally subsidized broadband raises college enrollment among rural high-school graduates. The Connect America Fund Phase II set block eligibility ex ante through an FCC cost model and deployed in stages over 2015-2021, leaving nearly half of eligible blocks unserved as controls. A staggered difference-in-differences design with block and cohort fixed effects links deployment records to restricted American Community Survey microdata, accessed through the Iowa State Federal Statistical Research Data Center (Project 3044).

2. Returns to Farming Among Iowa State Alumni

   Insoo Cho, Aakansha Jain, and Peter F. Orazem

   2026

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   Compares the household income of farmers and observationally similar nonfarm workers among Iowa State University graduates, using matching estimators and an endogenous treatment effects model. Farmers earn significantly less, even though household income includes off-farm earnings. Among all farmers the gap is concentrated in nonrural households; among full-time farmers it holds in rural areas as well. Entry into farming is driven mainly by family farming background.

3. Firm Entry and Serial Entrepreneurship Among Iowa State Alumni

   Aakansha Jain, Daniel Lin, and Peter F. Orazem

   2026

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   Examines how labor market conditions at graduation shape entrepreneurial entry among Iowa State University alumni across the 2008 and 2024 alumni surveys. About 20 percent of graduates start a for-profit business, and one in four of those start more than one. A higher Iowa unemployment rate at graduation delays business entry for about a decade, after which the effect fades; national conditions show no such effect. Over a full career, family and social ties to business ownership predict who becomes an entrepreneur.

Policy Reports and Public Engagement

1. Graduating in a Downturn: Business Cycles and Entrepreneurship Among Iowa State Graduates

   Aakansha Jain, Daniel Lin, and Peter F. Orazem

   2026
2. Who Hires H-2A Workers in Iowa, and for What?

   Aakansha Jain and Rabail Chandio

   2026
3. Where Do They Go? Migration Patterns of Iowa State University Alumni

   Grant Crespi and Aakansha Jain

   2026

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4. How a Land Grant College Affects Business and Job Creation

   A. Andrade, J. Eyles, Aakansha Jain, K. Kimle, Peter F. Orazem, and 1 more author

   2025

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