Firms often exploit loopholes in government contracts to boost revenues. The welfare consequences of this behavior depend on how firms use the marginal windfall dollar, yet little evidence exists to guide policymakers. This paper studies how hospitals allocated over $3 billion obtained from...

We use an admissions lottery to estimate the effect of a non-means tested preschool program on students' long-run earnings, employment, family income, household formation, and geographic mobility. We observe long-run outcomes by linking both admitted and non-admitted individuals to confidential...

We analyze the impact of fiscal and monetary stimulus in an economy with mortgage debt, where inflation redistributes from savers to borrowers. We show theoretically that fiscal transfers without future tax increases cause a surge in inflation, increasing consumption demand and house prices. The...

We characterize female-owned manufacturing establishments using newly digitized manuscripts from the US Census of Manufactures (1850, 1860, 1870, 1880). Female-owned establishments were smaller than male-owned establishments and had lower capital-to-output ratios, which could reflect...

The failure of the Freedman's Savings Bank (FSB), one of the only Black-serving banks in the early post-bellum South, was an economic catastrophe and one of the great episodes of racial exploitation in post-Emancipation history. It was also most Black Americans' first experience of banking. Can...

This paper investigates gender gaps in long-term career expectations and outcomes of PhD candidates in economics. For this purpose, we match rich survey data on PhD candidates (from the 2008-2010 job market cohorts) to public data on job histories and publication records through 2022. We...

This paper investigates the importance of the age composition for pandemic policy design. To do so, it introduces an economic framework with age heterogeneity, individual choice, and incomplete information, emphasizing the value of testing. Calibrating the model to the US Covid-19 pandemic...