States and aid agencies use employment programs to rehabilitate high-risk men in the belief that peaceful work opportunities will deter them from crime and violence. Rigorous evidence is rare. We experimentally evaluate a program of agricultural training, capital inputs, and counseling for...

There is a pronounced gradient in disability across socioeconomic groups, with better educated and higher income groups reporting substantially less disability. In this paper, we consider why that is the case, focusing on impairments in basic physical and cognitive aspects of living for the...

We study how provider choice in workers' compensation cases affects costs and outcomes. When employees choose the provider, costs are higher and return-to-work outcomes are worse, while physical recovery is the same although satisfaction with medical care is higher. The higher costs and worse...

This paper considers causal inference and sample selection bias in non-experimental settings in which: (i) few units in the non-experimental comparison group are comparable to the treatment units, and (ii) selecting a subset of comparison units similar to the treatment units is difficult because...

This paper studies the labor market impacts of firm accommodation decisions and assesses implications for the design of social insurance for workplace disability. We leverage a unique workers' compensation (WC) program in Oregon that provides wage subsidies to firms for accommodating injured...

The Trump Administration's tariffs created a wedge between mutually beneficial trades between China's producers and U.S. consumers. Moving production to nearby Vietnam allows firms to jump the tariff wall. Within Vietnam, cities closer to China with respect to distance and industrial mix grow...

This paper considers two central problems in our statistical frameworks which impair the ability to use wealth to assess economic sustainability or the impacts of economic downturns. Some increases in wealth may reflect increased economic rents--in particular, land and exploitation rents--and...

The problem of the commons is more important to our lives and thus more central to economics than a century ago when Katharine Coman led off the first issue of the American Economic Review. As the U.S. and other economies have grown, the carrying-capacity of the planet -- in regard to natural...

We explore the consequences of treating the multiple, non-market benefits associated with improvements in ecosystem health and the market economy from which damage to these ecosystems stems as an integrated system. We find that willingness to pay measures of use-based ecosystem services are...