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...

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 The policy was later repealed...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...

Recent debates about the optimal form of social protection programs have highlighted the potential for cash as the preferred form of transfer to low income households. However, in-kind transfers remain prevalent throughout the world. We argue that beneficiaries themselves may prefer in-kind...

The passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill led to sweeping changes to the central U.S. cash safety net program for families with children. Importantly, along with other changes, the reform imposed lifetime time limits for receipt of welfare de facto ending the entitlement nature of cash welfare...

This paper estimates the total value that individuals derive from their state's tax-and-transfer program, and shows how this value varies by income. The paper decomposes this total value into two components: redistributive value, which is due to predictable changes in income (and family...

We calculate the costs and benefits of the largest ever U.S. Government intervention in the financial sector announced the 2008 Columbus-day weekend. We estimate that this intervention increased the value of banks' financial claims by $131 billion at a taxpayers' cost of $25 -$47 billions with a...