Trends in skill bias and greater turbulence in modern labor markets put wages and employment prospects of unskilled workers under pressure. Weak incentives to utilize and maintain skills over the life-cycle become manifest with the ageing of the population. Policies to promote human capital...

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...

One of the goals of federal housing policy is to improve the prospects of children in poor families. But little research has been conducted into the effects of participation in housing programs on children, perhaps because it is difficult to find data sets with information about both...

This paper examines the impact of Clinton era social policy changes on the poor. It explores shifts in incentives, behavior, and incomes and discusses the role Clinton did or did not play in influencing the policy mix and the nature of the political debate surrounding poverty. Policy changes...

This paper constructs and estimates a dynamic model of the evolution of health for those over the age of 50 and then embeds that model of health dynamics in a structural, econometric model of retirement and saving. The health model traces the effects of smoking, obesity, alcohol consumption,...

This paper examines the effects of family structure on the economic resources available to children, using family fixed-effects to control for unobservable characteristics of the family. The effects of divorce on the income and consumption of children born to two-parent households, and the...

Work was one of the central motivations for welfare reform during the 1990s. One important rationale for work was based on human capital theory: work today should raise experience tomorrow, which in turn should raise future wage offers and reduce dependency on aid. Despite the importance of the...

Tax evasion generates billions of dollars of losses in government revenue and creates large distortions, especially in developing countries. Claims that the VAT facilitates tax enforcement by generating paper trails on transactions between firms have contributed to widespread VAT adoption...

Reducing tax evasion is a key priority for many governments, particularly in developing countries. A growing literature has argued that the ability to verify taxpayer self-reports against reports from third parties is critical for modern tax enforcement and the growth of state capacity. However,...

Observed economic policies in developing countries differ sharply both from those observed among developed countries and from those forecast by existing models of optimal policies. For example, developing countries rely little on broad-based taxes, and make substantial use of tariffs and...