Elements of the Swedish pension reform enacted in the 1990s have served as a model for reform initiatives in a number of other countries. Sweden’s experience suggests that a Notional Defined Contribution (NDC) pension reform can be sustained in a supportive political environment, but it has...

Early retirement incentives (ERIs) are increasingly prevalent in education as districts seek to close budget gaps by replacing expensive experienced teachers with lower-cost newer teachers. Combined with the aging of the teacher workforce, these ERIs are likely to change the composition of...

This paper provides an analysis of the role of prices in determining food purchases and nutrition using very detailed transaction-level observations for a large, nationally-representative sample of US consumers over the period 2002-2007. Using product-specific nutritional information, we develop...

Value-added data are an increasingly common evaluation tool for schools and teachers. Many school districts have adopted these methods and released the results publicly. In this paper, we study the release of value-added data in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Times newspaper to identify how...

Partly as a consequence of the substantial increase in the college wage premium since 1980, a much higher fraction of high school graduates enter college today than they did a quarter century ago. However, the rise in the fraction of high school graduates attending college has not been met by a...

Little is known about how wealth affects fertility decisions of the household. This paper fills this gap by investigating how changes in housing wealth affect fertility. We first conduct a state-level aggregate analysis to investigate how the birth rate is related to housing prices using...

This paper provides an analysis of the role of prices in determining food purchases and nutrition using very detailed transaction-level observations for a large, nationally-representative sample of US consumers over the period 2002-2007. Using product- specific nutritional information, we...

This paper documents the rise of the Internet as a source of state-tax-free cigarettes and its impact on taxed sales elasticities. Using data on cigarette tax rates, taxable cigarette sales and individual smoking rates by state from 1980 to 2005 merged with data on Internet penetration, the...

This paper reviews the literature on affirmative action in undergraduate education and law schools, focusing in particular on the tradeoff between the quality of an institution and the fit between a school and a student. We first discuss the conditions under which affirmative action for...

A considerable fraction of college students and bachelor's degree recipients enroll in multiple postsecondary institutions. Despite this fact, there is scant research that examines the nature of the paths - both the number and types of institutions - that students take to obtain a bachelor's...