Disability insurance take-up has expanded substantially in the past twenty years in the United States while shrinking in Canada. We empirically assess these trends by measuring the strength of the 'push' from weak labor markets versus the 'pull' of more generous benefits. Using an instrumental...

Does the death penalty save lives? A surge of recent interest in this question has yielded a series of papers purporting to show robust and precise estimates of a substantial deterrent effect of capital punishment. We assess the various approaches that have been used in this literature, testing...

A large literature has been concerned with the impacts of recent welfare reforms on income, earnings, transfers, and labor-force attachment. While one strand of this literature relies on observational studies conducted with large survey-sample data sets, a second makes use of data generated by...

We examine the incentive effects of transfer programs using a unique policy episode. Prior to 1989, social assistance recipients without children in Quebec who were under age 30 received benefits 60 percent lower than recipients older than 30. We use this sharp discontinuity in policy to...

Reducing or eliminating Social Security's Retirement Earnings Test (RET) can encourage labor supply of older individuals receiving benefits. However, these reforms can encourage earlier claiming of Social Security benefits, permanently lowering future benefits. We explore the consequences, for...

Using data from charitable organizations in the US, authors have established that government grants to charities largely crowd out giving from other sources, but that this reduction is due mostly to reduced fundraising activities of the charity itself. We use much more detailed data from over...

This paper assesses the long-run effects of the 1988 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) on the Canadian labor market using matched longitudinal administrative data for the years 1984-2004. We simultaneously examine the labor market effects of increased export expansion and import...

Job choice by high-skilled foreign-born workers in the US correlates strongly with country of origin. We apply a Frechet-Roy model of occupational choice to evaluate the causes of immigrant sorting. In a gravity specification, we find that revealed comparative advantage in the US is stronger for...

We use a detailed micro dataset on product availability to construct a direct high-frequency measure of consumer product shortages during the 2020-2021 pandemic. We document a widespread multi-fold rise in shortages in nearly all sectors early in the pandemic. Over time, the composition of...