Introduction: This study describes the characteristics of, services received by, and labor market outcomes of applicants with visual impairments to three state vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs. Our objective is to both document cross-state variation in VR clientele and services as well as...

This paper briefly describes and then implements the VR-ROI (Vocational Rehabilitation Return on Investment) Project's model for applicants in state fiscal year 2007 to Virginia's Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (VA DARS) and to Maryland's Division of Rehabilitation Services (MD...

This paper discusses issues associated with using readily available administrative data in estimating ROI for vocational rehabilitation services. It starts with a discussion of longitudinal outcomes data. The discussion is divided up into labor market outcomes data, other types of outcomes data,...

We provide an overview of the basic conceptual issues involved in estimating the return on investment (ROI) of state vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs. Our aim is to highlight some of the key issues in ROI evaluations, especially those associated with estimating the benefits and costs of...

We construct a structural model of participation in vocational rehabilitation and labor market outcomes for people with vision impairments. There are multiple services to choose among, and each has different effects on employment and earnings. We estimate negative effects for most service types,...

When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010, it resulted in the largest off-shore oil spill in United States history. Economic theory dictates that the oil damage and restitution payments that resulted from the spill should be capitalized into property values. To measure the extent of...

Current knowledge of the fiscal impacts of alternative land uses comes largely from cost of community services (CCS) case studies, the results of which are viewed skeptically in the literature because of numerous methodological concerns. In order to begin to fill the gap in our understanding of...

Smart-home technology has been heralded as an important way to increase energy conservation, but causal evidence remains scarce. We estimate the causal impact of smart thermostats on energy use using data from two novel field experiments in which a random subset of treated households were given...

Smart-home technologies have been heralded as an important way to increase energy conservation. While in vitro engineering estimates provide broad optimism, little has been done to explore whether such estimates scale beyond the lab. We estimate the causal impact of smart thermostats on energy...