Different beliefs about how fair social competition is and what determines income inequality, influence the redistributive policy chosen democratically in a society. But the composition of income in the first place depends on equilibrium tax policies. If a society believes that individual effort...

This paper examines the implications of tuition and need-based financial aid policies for family income - post-secondary (PS) attendance relationships. We first conduct a parallel empirical analysis of the effects of parental income on PS attendance for recent high school cohorts in both the...

In this paper we examine the link between retrospectively reported measures of childhood health and the prevalence of various major and minor diseases at older ages. Our analysis is based on comparable retrospective questionnaires placed in the Health and Retirement Study and the English...

This paper uses the Auerbach-Kotlikoff Dynamic Simulation Model to compare the projected demographic transitions in Canada and the United States. The simulation model determines the perfect foresight transition path of an economy in which individuals live to age 75. The model's preferences are...

Nearly a quarter of Mexico's workforce is self employed. But in the U.S. rates of self employment among Mexican Americans are only 6 percent, about half the rate among non-Latino whites. Using data from the Mexican and U.S. population census, we show that neither industrial composition nor...

Life expectancy in the United States fares poorly in international comparisons, primarily because of high mortality rates above age 50. Its low ranking is often blamed on a poor performance by the health care system rather than on behavioral or social factors. This paper presents evidence on the...

One of the central questions in macroeconomics for many years has been whether government policy can affect private saving rates, and if so to what extent and through what channels. The question has remained controversial because, as with other macroeconomic questions, experiments to check...

Do international trade and finance flow together? In theory, trade and finance can be substitutes or complements, so the matter must be resolved empirically. We study trade and financial flows from the United Kingdom from 1870 to 1913 and the United States in the interwar years. Trade and...

Using data from the 2010-2014 American Community Survey, we use a procedure suggested by Capps et al. (2015) to identify refugees from the larger group of immigrants to examine the outcomes of refugees relocated to the U.S. Among young adults, we show that refugees that enter the U.S. before age...

Disability insurance take-up has expanded substantially in the past twenty years in the United States while shrinking in Canada. We empirically assess these trends by measuring the strength of the ‘push' from weak labor markets versus the ‘pull' of more generous benefits. Using an...