Distribution choices by individuals retiring from CalSTRS are examined for participants that retired between 2016 and 2023. Women are much more likely to select a member-only annuity while a larger proportion of men select a J&S annuity that provide survivor benefits. Being married is a dominant...

We examine the preferences of low-income households in Kenya over the structure of unconditional cash transfers. We find, first, that most prefer lumpier transfers, and many prefer delayed receipt--unlike the structures typical of safety-net programs, but consistent with evidence on the...

We provide the first evidence on the disenrollment impacts of SNAP's General Work Requirements, which apply to 28% of SNAP households, including many with young children. We leverage a regression discontinuity design based on the age of the youngest child in the household relative to the date of...

Children represent the largest indirect beneficiaries of the U.S. social welfare system. Yet, many questions remain about the direct benefits of cash aid to children. The current understanding of the impacts of cash aid in the U.S. is drawn primarily from studies of in-kind benefits, tax...

The federal government enacted massive spending in the Pandemic Recession. But was this spending scaled to the magnitude of the economic downturn? We examine the responsiveness of the safety net to the Pandemic Recession and compare it to that in the Great Recession. Using monthly state-level...

The evolution of work is of emerging importance to advanced economies' growth. In this study, we develop a new semantic-distance-based algorithm to identify "new work," namely the new types of jobs introduced in the US. We characterize how "new work" relates to task content of jobs and skill...

I study age discrimination in hiring, exploiting a difference between age-revealed and partially age-blind hiring procedures. Under the first hiring procedure, age is revealed simultaneously with other applicant information and job offer rates are much lower for older than for younger job...

We study the relationships between ageist stereotypes - as reflected in the language used in job ads - and age discrimination in hiring, exploiting the text of job ads and differences in callbacks to older and younger job applicants from a previous resume (correspondence study) field experiment...

We use a laboratory experiment with randomized resumes and eyetracking to explore the effects of race on employment discrimination over the lifecycle. We show race discrimination against prime-age black job applicants that diminishes into middle age before re-emerging for older applicants....

We provide evidence from a field experiment in all 50 states on age discrimination in hiring for retail sales jobs. We relate measured age discrimination - the difference in callback rates between old and young applicants - to state variation in anti-discrimination laws protecting older workers....