A common theme which runs through much of the investment literature is that private incentives may lead to sub-optimal levels of investment activity. The idea has been extended casually to consideration of human capital investment as well. It is sometimes contended that decisions, made by...

The value of pension promises already made by US state governments will grow to approximately $7.9 trillion in 15 years. We study investment strategies of state pension plans and estimate the distribution of future funding outcomes. We conservatively predict a 50% chance of aggregate...

A common theme which runs through much of the investment literature is that private incentives may lead to sub-optimal levels of investment activity. The idea has been extended casually to consideration of human capital investment as well. It is sometimes contended that decisions, made by...

Public school funding depends heavily on local property tax revenue. Consequently, low-income households have limited access to quality education in neighborhoods with high house prices. In a dynamic life-cycle model with neighborhood choice and endogenous local school quality, we show that this...

Public intergenerational transfers (IGTs) may arise because of the failure of private arrangements to provide optimal economic resources for the young and the old. We examine the political sustainability of the system of public IGTs by asking what the outcome would be if the decision per se to...

This paper estimates the contribution of intergenerational transfers (inheritances and gifts) and socioeconomic background to wealth inequality in four OECD countries: France, Spain, Great Britain and the United States. We compare the observed wealth distribution with a non-parametric...

We evaluate a temporary public sector employment program targeted at individuals with weak labor market attachment, applying dynamic inverse probability weighting to account for dynamic selection. We show that the program is successful in increasing employment and reducing social assistance....