We examine the measurement of tax expenditures, as well as review issues concerning the classification of tax expenditures generally. We use calculations from NBER's TAXSIM to illustrate some of the problems with the current methodology for estimating tax expenditures. Unlike most previous work...

We measure the impact of municipal policies requiring governments to construct green buildings on private-sector adoption of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard. Using matching methods, panel data, and instrumental variables, we find...

Cartels participating in procurement auctions frequently use bid rotation or prioritize incumbents to allocate contracts. However, establishing a link between observed allocation patterns and firm conduct has been difficult: there are cost-based competitive explanations for such patterns. We...

Living wage laws, which were introduced in the mid-1990s and have expanded rapidly since then, are typically touted as anti-poverty measures. Yet they frequently restrict coverage to employers with city contracts, and in such cases apply to a small fraction of workers. This apparent...

Exploiting geological variation within shale deposits and timing in the initiation of hydraulic fracturing, this paper finds that allowing fracing leads to sharp increases in oil and gas recovery and improvements in a wide set of economic indicators. At the same time, estimated...

We study the impact of online degree programs on the market for U.S. higher education. Online degree programs increase the competitiveness of local education markets by providing additional options in areas that previously only had a small number of brick-and-mortar schools. We show that local...

We use 130 years of data on historical migrations to the United States to show a causal effect of the ancestry composition of US counties on foreign direct investment (FDI) sent and received by local firms. To isolate the causal effect of ancestry on FDI, we build a simple reduced-form model of...

We conduct a laboratory experiment to examine how third-party ratings impact charity choice and donative behavior, particularly in regards to preferences for local charities. Subjects are given a menu of ten charities, with a mix of local and non-local organizations included. We vary whether...