I discuss recent books offering differing explanations for persistent U.S. poverty. Desmond (2023) argues that aid to low-income Americans is captured by more powerful market actors. I contextualize this concern as about incidence and consider both policies for changing incidence (by changing...

In recent years, important and headline-grabbing findings have emerged from research using individual income tax data for statistical purposes. Demand for these microdata, accessible under the tax administration authority of the Internal Revenue Code and through the IRS Statistics of Income...

In the past two years, 25 states have enacted executive orders and legislation to reduce unnecessary degree requirements for public sector jobs, signaling a shift toward skill-based hiring. This paper examines the impact of these policy commitments on public perceptions, media coverage, and job...

We provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of minimum wages on blacks, and on the relative impacts on blacks vs. whites. We study not only teenagers - the focus of much of the minimum wage-employment literature - but also other low-skill groups. We focus primarily on employment, which...

Using merged administrative datasets from Minnesota, we bring new evidence on the labor market effects of large minimum wage increases by examining the policy changes implemented by Minneapolis and Saint Paul. We begin by using synthetic difference-in-differences methods to estimate...

We examine firm responses to location-based hiring subsidies. We leverage institutional features of the California Competes Tax Credit (CCTC), a large-scale business incentive program that incorporates best practices from prior job creation policies. The CCTC award selection procedure combines...

Advocates of minimum wage increases have long touted their potential to reduce poverty. This study assesses this claim. Using data spanning nearly four decades from the March Current Population Survey, and a dynamic difference-in-differences approach, we find that a 10 percent increase in the...

Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) argue that state-level minimum wage variation correlated with economic shocks generates spurious evidence that higher minimum wages reduce employment. Using minimum wage variation within contiguous county pairs sharing a state border, they find no relationship...

One of the arguments increasingly made to support large minimum wage increases is that they decrease wage or earnings gaps for minorities or women (e.g., Derenoncourt and Montialoux, 2021). The argument is often made with particular reference to higher tipped minimum wages for restaurant...

This paper contributes a broad overview of the Canadian long-term care system. Taking an economist's viewpoint, we bring together supply and demand factors to provide an economic analysis of the current and future path for long-term care. Like other OECD countries, the coming demographic wave of...