This paper examines the consequences of child support enforcement on custodial mothers' consumption decisions. We model the interaction in separated couples as a repeated game between the noncustodial father and the custodial mother who share a common good: the child. The mother exclusively...

This paper exploits dictated delays in local police hiring by a centralized national authority to break the simultaneity between police and crime. In Italy police o?cers can only be hired through lengthy national public contests which the Parliament, the President, and the Court of Auditors need...

Are suicides rational? At least since the 70's economists have been trying to shed light on this question by studying whether suicide rates are related to contemporaneous economic conditions. This paper goes one step further: we test whether suicides are linked to forward-looking behavior. In...

Based on unique data on individual bank robberies perpetrated in Italy between 2005 and 2007, this paper estimates the distribution of criminals' disutility of jail. The identification rests on the money versus risk trade-off criminals face when deciding whether to stay an additional minute...

This article uses survey data of 90,000 union employees working in 62 publicly-traded companies in Japan between 1990 and 2004 to study the effect of both own and self-reported reference wages on workers' subjective well-being levels. The availability of self-reported reference wages generates...

In 1995, the Social Security Administration started sending out the annual Social Security Statement. It contains information about the worker's estimated benefits at the ages 62, 65, and 70. I use this unique natural experiment to analyze the retirement and claiming decision making. First, I...

The dramatic rise in the disability insurance (DI) roles in the last 20 years has been the subject of much controversy in both popular and academic circles. While, the relationship between DI and labor force participation has been the subject of a growing literature, the mechanism of this...

In 1995, the Social Security Administration started sending out the annual Social Security Statement. It contains information about the worker’s estimated benefits at the ages 62, 65, and 70. We use this unique natural experiment to analyze the retirement and claiming decision making. First,...

Using data from the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals, this pa- per describes the shape of consumption profiles over the month for Social Security benefit recipients. Individuals with income mostly made up of Social Security ben- efits and who have some savings smooth consumption...

Incarceration of criminals reduces crime through two main channels, deterrence and incapac- itation. Because of a simultaneity between crime and incarceration–arrested criminals increase the prison population–it is difficult to measure these effects. This paper estimates the incapaci- tation...