The minimum wage is increasingly viewed as an important tool for improving public health outcomes, including reducing childbearing among teenagers. Taken at face value, recently reported estimates suggest that raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour could reduce the number of teenage...

Over the past decade, rising youth use of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) has prompted aggressive regulation by state and local governments. Between 2010 and 2019, ten states and two large counties adopted ENDS taxes. Applying a continuous treatment...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deems large indoor gatherings without social distancing the "highest risk" activity for COVID-19 contagion. On June 20, 2020, President Donald J. Trump held his first mass campaign rally following the US coronavirus outbreak at the indoor Bank...

Shelter in place orders (SIPOs) require residents to remain home for all but essential activities such as purchasing food or medicine, caring for others, exercise, or traveling for employment deemed essential. Between March 19 and April 20, 2020, 40 states and the District of Columbia adopted...

One of the most common policy prescriptions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 has been to legally enforce social distancing through state or local shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs). This paper is the first to explore the comparative effectiveness of early county-level SIPOs versus later statewide...

On March 19, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-33-20 2020, which required all residents of the state of California to shelter in place for all but essential activities such as grocery shopping, retrieving prescriptions from a pharmacy, or caring for relatives. This...

During the first four months of 2021, the United States distributed approximately 250 million doses of COVID-19 vaccinations, which resulted in the complete vaccination of nearly 45 percent of the adult population. In the midst of this mass vaccination effort, Texas became the first state to...

Ban-the-box (BTB) laws, which prevent employers from asking prospective employees about their criminal histories at initial job screenings, have been adopted by 25 states and the District of Columbia. Using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System, the Uniform Crime Reports, and...

The public health costs of tobacco consumption have been documented to be substantially larger than those of marijuana use. This study is the first to investigate the impact of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) on tobacco cigarette consumption. First, using data from the National Survey of Drug Use...

Advocates of minimum wage increases have long touted their potential to reduce poverty. This study assesses this claim. Using data spanning nearly four decades from the March Current Population Survey, and a dynamic difference-in-differences approach, we find that a 10 percent increase in the...