We study the effects of a change in financial aid policy introduced by a Northeastern university in 1998. Prior to that time, the university's financial aid packages for low-income students consisted of grants, loans, and campus jobs. After the change, the entire loan portion of the package for...

There has been substantial public policy concern over the relatively low rates of health insurance coverage among the self-employed in the United States. We use data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey conducted in 1996 to analyze how the self-employed and wage-earners differ both with...

There is considerable public policy concern over the relatively low rates of health insurance coverage among the self-employed in the United States. Presumably, the reason for the concern is that their low rates of insurance lead to worse health outcomes. We use data from the Medical Expenditure...

One of the most fundamental questions in public finance is who bears the burden of taxes -- the incidence of taxation.' Our understanding of incidence from an empirical standpoint is quite meager. Indeed, there seems to be little evidence even in the case that is theoretically the easiest --...

In early 1862, the United States government began issuing Greenbacks, a legal tender currency that was not convertible into gold. The government promised to redeem the Greenbacks in gold eventually, but speculators understood that the probability of redemption depended on Union Army military...

It is frequently asserted that a college's female undergraduate enrollment in the sciences and engineering can be increased by raising female representation on the faculties in these areas. Despite the widespread acceptance of this proposition, it does not appear to have been subjected to any...

The new tax law increases tax rates of high income individuals, and expands the earned income tax credit for low income individuals. We use a sample of actual tax returns to compute estimates of the 'marriage tax' - the change in couples joint tax upon marriage - under this new law. We predict...

This paper formalizes and tests the notion that state governments' expenditures depend on the spending of similarly situated states. We find that even after allowing for fixed state effects, year effects, and common random effects between neighbors, as state government's level of per capita...

In this paper we examine the trends in housing conditions among the urban poor over the last decade, relate these trends to the economic environments of the cities, and compare the poor to other income groups. We find that there has been a substantial decrease in "housing independence" -- among...

A common feature to most aggregative studies of the labor market is a marginal productivity expression in which the quantity of labor appears on the left hand side of the equation, and the right hand side includes the real wage and output. A number of researchers have cautioned that if the...