The paper presents a model of educational production which tries to make sense of recent evidence on effects of institutional arrangements on student performance. In a simple principal-agent framework, students choose their learning effort to maximize their net benefits, while the government...

Expanding welfare benefits to include two-parent families has long been considered an option for a public policy designed to strengthen family units. The negative income tax experiments employed this option, and it was found that the experimental group experienced 50 percent higher marital...

This paper presents a model of educational production that tries to make sense of recent evidence on effects of institutional arrangements on student performance. In a simple principal-agent framework, students choose their learning effort to maximize their net benefits, while the government...

The author challenges the widespread assumption that the wage effects of federal training programs are reliable and unbiased estimates of productivity effects and social benefits. Evidence is presented that the reputations of government training programs are unreliable and that employers...

The Targeted Jobs Tax Credit (TJTC) is probably the most outstanding example of a generous entitlement program with a very low participation rate. Only about 10 percent of eligible youth hired are claimed as a tax credit by their employers. The causes of the low participation rates are analyzed...