We study the local effects of a federal program that helped cities clear areas for redevelopment, rehabilitate structures, complete city plans, and enforce building codes. We use an instrumental variable strategy to estimate the program's effects on city-level measures of income, property...

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...

The effects of the changing U.S. age distribution on various macroeconomic equations are examined in this paper. The equations include consumption, money demand, housing investment, and labor force participation equations. Seven age groups are analyzed: 16-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-39, 40- 54, 55-64,...

This paper compares the predictions of three different saving models with respect to the impact of projected U.S. demographic change on future U.S. saving rates. The three models are the life cycle model, the infinite horizon altruism model, and a reduced form econometric model. The findings for...

This paper deals with the issue of using infant and childhood mortality as an indicator of inequality. The case is that of the United States in the 20th century. Using microdata from the 1900 and 1910 Integrated Public Use Microsamples (IPUMS), published data from the Birth Registration Area in...

The United States Government recently concluded a year-long process to develop a range of values representing the monetized damages associated with an incremental increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, commonly referred to as the social cost of carbon (SCC). These values are currently used...

A key policy question is: How high an inflation rate should central banks target? This depends crucially on the costs of inflation. An important concern is that high inflation will lead to inefficient price dispersion. Workhorse New Keynesian models imply that this cost of inflation is very...

Using a general equilibrium model of the United States economy,we examine the combined welfare cost of all taxes in the U.S. revenue system.We find that the welfare losses caused by distortionary taxation can be very large, both on average and at the margin.The marginal welfare loss to consumers...

I study the impact of transportation on health in the rural US, 1820–1847. Measuring health by average stature, I find that greater transportation linkage, as measured by market access, in a cohort's county-year of birth had an adverse impact on its health. A one-standard deviation increase in...

The repeated failure of Ireland's potato crop in the late 1840s led to a major famine and a surge in migration to the US. We build a dataset of Irish immigrants and their sons by linking males from 1850 to 1880 US census records. For comparison, we also link German and British immigrants, their...