We evaluate a labor market integration program that fast-tracked asylum seekers into the Italian labor market through personalized job mentoring, placement assistance, and on-the-job training. Leveraging randomized assignment across reception centers and individual-level administrative records,...

This paper examines how access to informal insurance shapes family responses to reductions in social welfare benefits, and how these adjustments affect children's development. In 2003, Israel reformed its child allowance program, significantly reducing unconditional cash benefits for large...

We investigate the impact of immigration on public budgets using administrative data from German districts (Kreise). While previous literature suggests that the fiscal benefits of migration depend on government spending responses to immigration, the local-level effects in Germany remain...

This paper investigates the effect of a temporary forced internal migration on the voting behavior in the receiving municipalities. During World War I, around 500,00 thousand displaced nationals were resettled from the Italian government within the country and stayed in the receiving place for...

This study examines how student aid eligibility influences application decisions to higher education using administrative data from the French national centralized platform. We employ a difference-in-differences approach following a change in the income thresholds for aid eligibility. We find...

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the backbone of the U.S. safety net. We provide the most comprehensive and generalizable evaluation of the labor supply effects of access to modern SNAP to date. To do so we use new, rich administrative data and an examiner design based on...

Why is in-kind aid a prominent feature of welfare systems? We present a lab-in-the-field experiment involving members of the general U.S. population and SNAP recipients. After documenting a widespread desire to limit recipients’ choices, we quantify the relative importance of (i) welfarist...

We compare inequality and social mobility trends in Eastern European countries exposed to Soviet Communist (SC) regimes with those not exposed, using similar welfare measures. We draw upon a rich retrospective dataset that collects relevant welfare measures across regimes including information...

Does the supply of a welfare state create its own demand? Many economic scholars studying welfare arrangements refer to Say's law and insinuate a self-destructive welfare state. However, little is known about the empirical validity of these assumptions and hypotheses. We study the dynamic effect...

This paper explores the introduction of collective risk-sharing elements in defined contri-bution pension contracts. We consider status-contingent, age-contingent and asset contingent risk-sharing arrangements. All arrangements raise aggregate welfare, as measured by equiva- lent variations....