California has the highest Earned Income Tax (EITC) supplement to the federal EITC, with an 85% supplement rate. However, we find that despite the apparent generosity of the California EITC, there is no employment effect on less-skilled single mothers, in sharp contrast to the evidence of...

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...

This paper uses administrative data to analyze a large and 8-year long employer payroll tax rate cut in Sweden for young workers aged 26 or less. First, we document that while active, the reform raised youth employment among the treated workers. The long-run effects are twice as large as the...

This paper reconsiders the impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) on labor supply at the extensive margin. I investigate every EITC reform at the state and federal level since the inception of the policy in 1975. Based on event studies comparing single women with and without children, or...

The majority of enterprises in developing countries have no paid workers. Is this optimal, or the result of frictions in labor markets? We conduct an experiment providing wage subsidies to randomly chosen microenterprises in Sri Lanka. In the presence of frictions, a short-term subsidy could...

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...

In 2021, the Biden Administration issued mandates requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for U.S. federal employees and contractors and for some healthcare and private sector workers. Although these mandates have been subject to legal challenges and some have been halted or delayed, rigorous appraisal...

Using monthly data from major U.S. metropolitan areas that span state borders, we estimate the elasticity of employment with respect to the minimum wage using a difference-in-differences design with continuous treatment in two-digit industries of 71 (Arts, Entertainment and Recreation) and 72...

We study the labor market effects of permanent 23-50% reductions in unemployment insurance benefits available in seven states. Leveraging linked firm-establishment data, we find that establishments based in reform states experience 1.5-2.4% faster employment growth relative to the same firm's...

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...