In the United States and Europe there has been renewed interest in subsidizing firms that employ disadvantaged workers as a means of addressing poverty and other social problems. In contrast, the prevailing practice is largely to provide social welfare benefits directly to individuals. Which...

Using a law within Social Security that provides clear financial incentives to delay marriage, we estimate the financial value of a month of marriage. Specifically, the law provides that widows who are eligible for Social Security benefits on their deceased spouse's earnings records are eligible...

Since the 1990s, states have received unprecedented flexibility to determine Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility and program administration. We investigate the role of state flexibility in explaining SNAP caseloads and find that state SNAP policies accounted for nearly...

Vast organ shortages motivated recent efforts to increase the supply of transplantable organs, but we know little about the demand side of the market. We test the implications of a model of organ demand using the universe of U.S. transplant data from 1987 to 2013. Exploiting variation in supply...

As the incidence of fatal drug overdose has quadrupled in the U.S. in the past two decades, patients awaiting organ transplants may be unintended beneficiaries. We use Vital Statistics mortality data, merged with data on the universe of transplant candidates and recipients in the U.S. from the...

The Social Security program, like the federal income tax system, is not marriage neutral. Provisions in each public program, in effect, subsidize or penalize marriage. In this paper, we examine marriage penalties associated with Social Security's child–in–care benefits. This program provides...