This piece introduces "social organization theory" to the analysis of drug-law enforcement policy. Social organization theory was developed more than 50 years ago as an innovative attempt to explain criminal behavior. This theory should have revolutionized criminal law policy. Unfortunately, it...

This paper investigates the impact of financial incentive programs, which have become an increasingly common component of welfare programs. We review experimental evidence from several such programs. Financial incentive programs appear to increase work and raise income (lower poverty), but cost...

Over the past decade, public assistance caseloads have increased rapidly to an historical high point and then decreased with even greater speed to their lowest level in decades. Several recent papers have focused on the rise in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) caseloads in the...

This paper investigates cyclicality in real wages between 1969 and 1982, using 14 years of data from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics. First, it investigates the extent to which movements in and out of the labor market created apparent wage cyclicality. Second, it investigates whether...

Welfare reform efforts in the 1990s aimed at reducing welfare dependence and moving women into work. Public assistance use fell and labor force participation among mothers rose at a stunning rate over the decade. Poverty declined, but at a slower rate. These changes are causally related to the...

This chapter summarizes recent research in economics that investigates differentials by race and gender in the labor market. We start with a statistical overview of the trends in labor market outcomes by race, gender and Hispanic origin, including some simple regressions on the determinants of...