European countries are much more generous to the poor relative to the US level of generosity. Economic models suggest that redistribution is a function of the variance and skewness of the pre-tax income distribution, the volatility of income (perhaps because of trade shocks), the social costs of...

Governments around the world redistribute to distressed areas by conditioning taxes and transfers on location. We show that when poor households are spatially concentrated, transfers from one location to another can yield equity gains that outweigh their efficiency costs, even when income-based...

The presence of a westward-moving frontier of settlement shaped early U.S. history. In 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner famously argued that the American frontier fostered individualism. We investigate the Frontier Thesis and identify its long-run implications for culture and...

Recent policy debate on minimum wages has focused not only on raising the minimum wage, but on eliminating the tip credit for restaurant workers. We use data on past variation in tip credits - or minimum wages for restaurant workers - to provide evidence on the potential impacts of eliminating...

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...

Because its benefit formula replaces a greater fraction of the lifetime earnings of lower earners than of higher earnings, Social Security is generally thought to be progressive, providing However, much of the intra-cohort redistribution in the U.S. Social Security system is related to factors...

Regional shocks are an important feature of the U.S. economy. Households' ability to self-insure against these shocks depends on how they affect local interest rates. In the United States, most borrowing occurs through the mortgage market and is influenced by the presence of government-sponsored...

There are large cross-sectional differences in how often US borrowers refinance mortgages. In this paper, we develop an equilibrium mortgage pricing model with heterogeneous borrowers and use it to show that equilibrium forces imply important cross-subsidies from borrowers who rarely refinance...

We review the growing literature on the political economy of immigration. First, we discuss the effects of immigration on a wide range of political and social outcomes. The existing evidence suggests that immigrants often, but not always, trigger backlash, increasing support for anti-immigrant...

The United States is among the most individualistic societies in the world. However, unlike Western European individualism, which is imbued with moral universalism, America's "rugged individualism" is instead particularistic. We link this distinctive cultural configuration to the country's...