This paper reviews some of the econometric methods that have been used in the economics of education. The focus is on understanding how the assumptions made to justify and implement such methods relate to the underlying economic model and the interpretation of the results. We start by...

This paper calculates monthly time series for the overall safety net's statutory marginal labor income tax rate as a function of skill and marital status. Marginal tax rates increased significantly for all groups between 2007 and 2009, and dramatically so for unmarried household heads. The...

A central justification for social insurance and for other policies aimed at retirement savings is that individuals may fail to make adequate provision during their working years. Much research has focused on myopia and other behavioral limitations. Yet little attention has been devoted to how...

We develop an equilibrium lifecycle model of education, marriage and labor supply and consumption in a transferable utility context. Individuals start by choosing their investments in education anticipating returns in the marriage market and the labor market. They then match based on the...

Virtually all public policies regarding taxation and the redistribution of income rely on explicit or implicit assumptions about the long run effect of wages rates on labor supply. The available estimates of the wage elasticity of male labor supply in the literature have varied between -0.2 and...

We use anticipated changes in tax rates associated with changes in family composition to estimate intertemporal labor supply elasticities and elasticities of taxable income with respect to the net-of-tax wage rate. Changes in the ages of children can affect marginal tax rates through provisions...

This paper uses a panel of individual tax returns and the `bracket creep' as source of tax rate variation to construct instrumental variables estimates of the sensitivity of income to changes in tax rates. From 1979 to 1981, the US income tax schedule was fixed in nominal terms while inflation...

This paper tests whether providing information about the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) affects EITC recipients' earnings decisions. We conducted a randomized experiment with 43,000 EITC recipients at H&R Block in which tax preparers gave simple, personalized information about the EITC schedule...

Substantial evidence suggests that savings behavior may depart from neoclassical optimization. This article examines the implications of raising the savings rate - whether through social security, retirement plans, or otherwise - for labor supply, where labor supply is determined by behavioral...

Labor supply theory makes strong predictions about how the introduction of a social welfare program impacts work effort. Although there is a large literature on the work incentive effects of AFDC and the EITC, relatively little is known about the work incentive effects of the Food Stamp Program...