Of the many labour market Hartz IV reforms that have been implemented in Germany since 2005, the role of short-term unemployment insurance has not received much attention. In this paper we examine distributional effects of labour earnings and unemployment benefits using simulated increases in...

We quantify labour market effects of changes in the potential benefit duration (PBD) in Poland. Individual workers' PBD depends on the county unemployment rate relative to the national average - 12 months of PBD above a cut-off of 125 per cent and 6 months below. This cut-off shifted from 125 to...

We show that the largest increase in unemployment benefits in U.S. history had large spending impacts and small job-finding impacts. This finding has three implications. First, increased benefits were important for explaining aggregate spending dynamics--but not employment dynamics--during the...

We study effects of retirement on cognitive abilities (up to ten years after retirement) using data from 21 countries in Continental Europe, England, and the US, and exploiting early-retirement thresholds for identification. For this purpose, combines event-study estimations with the marginal...

As the share of U.S. adult children living with their parents increases, it is important to understand how children who "boomerang" back home impact their parents in their pre-retirement and post-retirement years. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine the effects of...

In Belgium, a series of social security reforms have been implemented over the years with the overarching goal of increasing the labor force participation through better work incentives. Using individual-level administrative data, the paper studies the impact of those incentive-based reforms on...

Developmental disabilities are not rare among U.S. children and rates have been increasing in recent decades. The increases have been driven by cognitive and behavioral disorders. While some studies have investigated the effects of specific childhood conditions, particularly ADHD, on adult...

About 20% of German workers retire on disability pensions. Disability pensions provide fairly generous benefits for those who are not already age-eligible for an old-age pension and who are deemed unable to work for health reasons. In this paper, we use two sets of individual survey data to...

Over 20 percent of prison and jail inmates in the United States are currently awaiting trial, but little is known about the impact of pre-trial detention on defendants. This paper uses the detention tendencies of quasi-randomly assigned bail judges to estimate the causal effects of pre-trial...

This paper studies how gradualism affects the welfare gains from trade, technology, and reforms. When people face adjustment frictions, gradual shocks create less adverse distributional effects in the short run. We show that there are welfare gains from inducing a more gradual transition via...