The Family Support Act allows states to reimburse child care costs up to the 75th percentile of local market price for child care. States must carry out surveys to estimate these 75th percentiles. This estimation problem raises two major statistical issues: (1) picking a sample design that will...

In this paper we develop a survival time model in which the probability of eventual failure is less than one, and in which both the probability of eventual failure and the timing of failure depend (separately) on individual characteristics. We apply this model to data on the tiring of return to...

We assess the role of child care in the welfare to work transition using an unusually large and comprehensive data base. Our data are for Massachusetts, a state that began welfare reform in 1995 under a federal waiver, for the period July 1996 through August 1997. We find that both the nature of...

In this paper, we develop and estimate a model of violence between romantically linked men and women. Physical violence is viewed as both a source of direct gratification and as an instrument for controlling the victim's behavior. Our model is a Stackleberg type model in which the assailant...

Most European governments have universal, consolidated, education-based ECE programs that are available from early in the morning to late in the evening throughout the year. European ECE programs are uniformly of high quality, generally last at least three years, and are funded to serve all...

We provide substantial evidence that placing child care provider inspection and complaint reports on the Internet changed the behavior of child care inspectors and improved the quality of child care received by low-income children. We believe that these results were forthcoming in part because:...

We find that reforms in the Rhode Island subsidized child care program, including income and age eligibility expansions and increases in the reimbursement rates paid to formal providers, significantly increased the likelihood that current and former welfare families: a) would use child care...

In this paper we develop a model of an eligible family's decision to take or not to take child care subsidies. This decision depends on the net benefits the family expects to derive from the subsidies over their expected duration. We contend that such a demand-side model for the take-up of child...

In this paper we consider the conditions under which instrumental variables methods are required in estimating a hedonic price function and its accompanying demand and supply relations. We assume simple functional forms that permit an explicit solution for the equilibrium hedonic price function....

In this paper, we consider a number of issues regarding crime prevention and criminal justice. We begin by considering how crime is measured and present both general and specific evidence on the level of crime in a variety of countries. Crime is pervasive and varies substantially across...