A common problem of welfare states consists of a high unemployment risk for low-skilled workers. This is often attributed to a lack of jobs for the low-skilled, but it may as well be caused by a lack of incentives to work. Low-skilled workers are easily substitutable and therefore have little...

This paper formulates and estimates an open-economy overlapping generation general-equilibrium model of endogenous heterogeneous human capital in the form of schooling and on-the-job training. Physical capital accumulation is also analyzed. We use the model to explain rising wage inequality in...

A variety of criteria are relevant for evaluating alternative policies in democratic societies composed of persons with diverse values and perspectives. In this paper, we consider alternative criteria for evaluating the welfare state, and the data required to operationalize them. We examine sets...

This paper summarizes our recent work on the rate of return and cost-benefit ratio of an influential early childhood program.

This paper compares the structural approach to economic policy analysis with the program evaluation approach. It offers a third way to do policy analysis that combines the best features of both approaches. We illustrate the value of this alternative approach by making the implicit economics of...

The recent experimental evaluation of the U.S. Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) program found negative effects of training on the earnings of disadvantaged male youth and no effect on the earnings of disadvantaged female youth. These findings provided justification for Congress to cut the...

This paper formulates an econometric framework for studying the impact of interventions on discrete outcomes when responses to treatment vary among observationally identical persons. Using a latent variable model that can be linked to well-posed economic models, we show how to define and...

This paper exposits and relates two distinct approaches to bounding the average treatment effect. One approach, based on instrumental variables, is due to Manski (1990, 1994), who derives tight bounds on the average treatment effect under a mean independence form of the instrumental variables...