This paper empirically assesses the incidence and efficiency of Round I of the federal urban Empowerment Zone (EZ) program using confidential microdata from the Decennial Census and the Longitudinal Business Database. To ground our welfare analysis, we develop a heterogeneous agent general...

This paper provides experimental evidence on the effect of increased competition on prices and quality in the retail sector. We randomized the entry of 61 firms into 72 markets serving the beneficiaries of a conditional cash transfer program in the Dominican Republic. Six months after the...

We study the results of a massive nationwide correspondence experiment sending more than 83,000 fictitious applications with randomized characteristics to geographically dispersed jobs posted by 108 of the largest U.S. employers. Distinctively Black names reduce the probability of employer...

We propose leave-out estimators of quadratic forms designed for the study of linear models with unrestricted heteroscedasticity. Applications include analysis of variance and tests of linear restrictions in models with many regressors. An approximation algorithm is provided that enables accurate...

Structural econometric methods are often criticized for being sensitive to functional form assumptions. We study parametric estimators of the local average treatment effect (LATE) derived from a widely used class of latent threshold crossing models and show they yield LATE estimates...

This paper empirically evaluates the cost-effectiveness of Head Start, the largest early-childhood education program in the United States. Using data from the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS), we show that Head Start draws roughly a third of its participants from competing preschool programs, many...

We study the short-term impact of Connecticut's Jobs First welfare reform experiment on women's labor supply and welfare participation decisions. A non-parametric optimizing model is shown to restrict the set of counterfactual choices compatible with each woman's actual choice. These revealed...

There is growing evidence that firm-specific pay premiums are an important source of wage inequality. These premiums will contribute to the gender wage gap if women are less likely to work at high-paying firms or if women negotiate (or are offered) worse wage bargains with their employers than...

This paper analyzes how patent-induced shocks to labor productivity propagate into worker compensation using a new linkage of US patent applications to US business and worker tax records. We infer the causal effects of patent allowances by comparing firms whose patent applications were initially...

We study trends in income inequality across U.S. states and counties 1960-2019 using a mix of administrative and survey data sources. Both states and counties have diverged in terms of per-capita pre-tax incomes since the late 1990s, with transfers serving to dampen this divergence. County...