Economists have recently begun using independent online surveys to collect national labor market data. Questions remain over the quality of such data. This paper provides an approach to address these concerns. Our case study is the Real-Time Population Survey (RPS), a novel online survey of the...

This report presents the results of a rapid, low-cost survey that collects labor market data for individuals in the United States. The Yale Labor Survey (YLS) used an online panel from YouGov to replicate statistics from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the government’s source of household...

Good data on the size and composition of the independent contractor workforce are elusive, with household survey and administrative tax data often disagreeing on levels and trends. We carried out a series of focus groups to learn how self-employed independent contractors speak about their work....

Customers at the online music label Magnatune can pay what they want for albums, as long as the payment is within a given price range ($5-$18). Magnatune recommends to pay $8, and on average customers paid $8.20 (Regner and Barria, 2009). We ran an online survey and collected responses from 227...

Survival ratios and death rates for chronic conditions can be estimated from successive, cross-sectional surveys when the condition and the age of onset are obtained. Survival ratios use the estimated population in the first survey period as the denominator and the estimated number of survivors...

We compare the inflation expectations reported by consumers in a survey with their behavior in a financially incentivized investment experiment designed such that future inflation affects payoffs. The inflation expectations survey is found to be informative in the sense that the beliefs reported...

Randomized control trials (RCTs) have become increasingly important as an evidence-based method to evaluate interventions such as government programs and policy initiatives. Frequently, however, RCTs are characterized by "imperfect compliance," in that not all the subjects who are randomly...

Unlike most of the earlier U.S. time-use surveys, the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) does not collect information on secondary activities. It does, however, include a set of questions asking respondents to identify times when a child under 13 was "in your care." The goal of these questions is...

This paper presents new survey evidence on workers' response to the 2011 payroll tax cuts. While workers intended to spend 10 to 18 percent of their tax-cut income, they reported actually spending 28 to 43 percent of the funds. This is higher than estimates from studies of recent tax cuts, and...

Customers at the online music label Magnatune can pay what they want for albums, as long as the payment is within a given price range ($5-$18). Magnatune recommends to pay $8, and on average customers paid $8.20 (Regner and Barria, 2009). We ran an online survey and collected responses from 227...