Wealth varies considerably across the population and changes significantly over the lifecycle. In this paper, we trace out trajectories of wealth across several key life milestones, including marriage, homeownership, childbirth, divorce, disability, health shocks, retirement and widowhood using...

Residential segregation by race and income are enduring features of urban America. Understanding the effects of residential segregation on educational attainment, labor market outcomes, criminal activity and other outcomes has been a leading project of the social sciences for over half a...

Prior research has demonstrated that financial aid can influence both college enrollments and completions, but less is known about its post-college consequences. Even for students whose attainment is unaffected, financial aid may affect post-college outcomes via reductions in both time to degree...

The rich live longer than the poor, but relatively little is known about the evolution of health inequality across the lifecycle. Using rich administrative data from the Netherlands, we develop an index of chronic disease burden based on the projected contribution to old-age mortality. Chronic...

We show that measurable managerial characteristics have significant explanatory power for corporate financing decisions beyond traditional capital-structure determinants. First, managers who believe that their firm is undervalued view external financing as overpriced, especially equity. Such...

Strong versions of the set point hypothesis argue that subjective well-being measures reflect each individual's own personality and that deviations from that set point will tend to be short-lived, rendering them poor measures of the quality of life. International migration provides an excellent...

Developmental disabilities are not rare among U.S. children and rates have been increasing in recent decades. The increases have been driven by cognitive and behavioral disorders. While some studies have investigated the effects of specific childhood conditions, particularly ADHD, on adult...

We develop an economic theory of mental health. The theory is grounded in classic and modern psychiatric literature, is disciplined with micro data, and is formalized in a life-cycle heterogeneous agent framework. In our model, individuals experiencing mental illness have pessimistic...

Why do low-income individuals often oppose redistribution? We hypothesize that an aversion to being in "last place" undercuts support for redistribution, with low-income individuals punishing those slightly below themselves to keep someone "beneath" them. In laboratory experiments, we find...