Stimulus checks have become an increasingly important policy tool in recent U.S. recessions. How does the households' marginal propensity to spend (MPX) vary as checks become larger? To quantify this size-dependence in the MPX, we augment a canonical model of durable spending by introducing a...

All redistributive and social insurance programs trade off the potential benefits of transfers with the disincentives these programs generate. We investigate this trade-off using newly collected lifetime data for 16,000 women who applied to the Mothers' Pension Program, the first cash transfer...

We examine the consequences of underreporting of transfer programs for prototypical analyses of low-income populations using the Current Population Survey (CPS), the source of official poverty and inequality statistics. We link administrative data for food stamps, TANF, General Assistance, and...

We estimate the long-run impact of cash transfers to poor families on children's longevity, educational attainment, nutritional status, and income in adulthood. To do so, we collected individual-level administrative records of applicants to the Mothers' Pension program--the first...

The potential benefits of demand side interventions may leak into the profits of suppliers whenever there is market power. In those situations, governments could attempt to regulate the market or to increase competition. We provide the first experimental evidence on the effect of increased...

Interventions targeting adolescent girls are seen as a key component in the fight to break the cycle of poverty in developing countries. Policies that enable them to reach their full potential can have a strong impact not only on their own wellbeing, but also on that of future generations. This...