Using a highly stylized dynamic microsimulation model, we project the labor force of the United States up to the year 2060 and contrast these projections with projections for Germany to assess differential effects on outcomes The projections are consistent with the U S Census Bureau's and...

Transitions from high mortality and fertility to low mortality and fertility can be beneficial to economies as large baby boom cohorts enter the workforce and save for retirement, while rising longevity has perhaps increased both the incentive to invest in education and to save for retirement....

We assess the evidence on the contribution of changes in the population age structure to the changing fortunes of youths in labor markets in advanced economies over the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, and use this evidence to project the likely effects of future cohort sizes on youth labor...

In the 130 years from the first federal census of the United States in 1790, the American population increased from about 4 million men to almost 107 million persons. This was predominantly due to natural increase, early driven by high birth rates and moderate motrality levels and after the...

In comparing Canada with the U.S., we first simulate the U.S. demographic transition, treating the U.S. as a closed economy. The time path of interest rates obtained from the U.S. simulations are then used in the Canadian simulations. In the Canada simulations, Canada is assumed to be an open...

In this paper I explore the effect of patronage or machine' politics on government performance in American cities during the Progressive era. I use game theoretic models and an empirical analysis of spending and public goods provision during the first decade of the twentieth century in a cross...

The boundary discontinuity method of causal inference may yield misleading results if a policy's impacts do not stop at the border of the implementing jurisdiction. We use geographically precise longitudinal employment data documenting worker job-to-job mobility to study policy spillovers in the...

This paper investigates if research findings change political leaders' beliefs and cause policy change. Collaborating with the National Confederation of Municipalities in Brazil, we work with 2,150 municipalities and the mayors who control their policies. We use experiments to measure mayors'...

James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. Boston as a consequence stagnated, but Curley kept winning...

This paper uses political reservations for women in India to study the impact of women's leadership on policy decisions. In 1998, one third of all leadership positions of Village Councils in West Bengal were randomly selected to be reserved for a woman: in these councils only women could be...