This paper explores the relationship between household marginal income tax rates, the set of assets that households own, and the portfolio shares accounted for by each of these assets. It analyzes data from the 1983, 1989, 1992, and 1995 Surveys of Consumer Finances and develops a new algorithm...

Designing benefits for the growing platform workforce in the U.S. poses significant challenges. While platform workers need protection against unforeseen shocks, work that is often part time and spread across multiple platforms makes the traditional benefits model untenable. This paper reports...

We analyze whether receiving care from higher-priced hospitals leads to lower mortality. We overcome selection issues by using an instrumental variable approach which exploits that ambulance companies are quasi-randomly assigned to transport patients and have strong preferences for certain...

We empirically assess the potential financial impact of future gene therapies on the US economy. After identifying 109 late-stage gene therapy clinical trials currently underway, we estimate the number of new and existing patients with corresponding diseases to be treated by these gene...

This paper documents trends over the last two decades in retirement behavior and retirement income choices by participants in TIAA, a large and mature defined contribution plan with a wide range of withdrawal options. Between 2000 and 2018, the average retirement age rose by approximately 1.3...

The Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plan represents the most significant privatization of the delivery of a public insurance benefit in recent history, with dozens of private insurers offering a wide range of products with varying prices and product features; the typical elder had a choice of...

Estimates the expected present discounted value (EPDV) of future payouts on both immediate and deferred annuities are sensitive to the discount rate used to value future payment streams and assumptions about future mortality rates. This paper illustrates this with respect to annuities that were...

This paper presents new evidence on the effect of state fiscal institutions, particularly balanced-budget rules and restrictions on state debt issuance, on the yields on state general obligation bonds. We analyze information from the Chubb Relative Value Survey, which contains relative...

This paper summarizes the development of private annuity markets in the United States. Annuities constituted a small share of the U.S. insurance market until the 1930s, when two developments contributed to their growth. First, concerns about the stability of the financial system drove investors...

This paper summarizes state balanced budget requirements, and the available empirical evidence on the effect of these rules on state fiscal policies. Existing state rules differ from many current proposals at the federal level. They are typically restricted to part of the state budget, they...