A key question for Social Security reform is whether workers currently perceive the link on the margin between the Social Security taxes they pay and the Social Security benefits they will receive. We estimate the effects of the marginal Social Security benefits that accrue with additional...

We build a life cycle model of labor supply that incorporates changes along both the intensive and extensive margin and use it to assess the consequences of changes in tax and transfer policies on equilibrium hours of work. We find that changes in taxes have large aggregate effects on hours of...

The success of multi-faceted "graduation" programs at reducing poverty raises three questions: can the impacts of these programs be maintained when implemented by governments at scale, will positive effects be offset by negative spillovers, and can bundled programs be streamlined without losing...

We examine union-non-union differentials in wages and hours in the United States over the last 50 years using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The regression-adjusted difference between union members' and non-members' hourly earnings has been falling since the Great Recession. The...

We examine patterns of work in the U.S. from 1973-2018 with the novel focus on days per week, using intermittent CPS samples and one ATUS sample. Among full-time workers the incidence of four-day work tripled during this period, with over 8 million more full-time workers on four-day weeks. The...

To study the effects of neighborhood and place-based interventions, this paper incorporates neighborhood effects into a general equilibrium (GE) heterogeneous-agent overlapping-generations model with endogenous location choice and child skill development. Importantly, housing costs as well as...

This paper examines the economic foundations of some recently proposed criteria for evaluating the benefits of social programs. These criteria are appropriate for comparing a class of revenue-constant policies. They replace foundational principles of social opportunity costs with accounting...

We study the effects of welfare generosity on international migration using reforms of immigrant welfare benefits in Denmark. The first reform, implemented in 2002, lowered benefits for non-EU immigrants by about 50%, with no changes for natives or EU immigrants. The policy was later repealed...

Do mandatory spending rules improve social welfare? We analyze a dynamic political-economy model in which two parties disagree on the split of a fixed budget between public goods and private transfers. Under a mandatory spending rule, expenditures are governed by criteria set by enacted law,...

The extent to which households can self-insure and the government can help them to do so depends on the wage risk that they face and their family structure. We study wage risk in the UK and show that the persistence and riskiness of wages depends on one's age and position in the wage...