Reemployment bonus experiments offer large lump sum payments to unemployment insurance (UI) recipients who find a job quickly. Such experiments are underway or have been recently completed in four states. This paper analyzes the results from Illinois and discusses the implications of the...

We examine white and black male nonagricultural self-employment from 1910 to 1997. Self-employment rates fell through 1970 and then rose. White male trends were due to declining rates within industries, ending in 1970, counterbalanced by a continuing shift toward high self-employment industries....

We show that self-employment rates differ substantially across 60 ethnic and racial groups in the United States. These differences exist within broad combinations of groups such as Asians and Hispanics, and are almost as great after regression controls, including age, education, immigrant...

Recent social experiments have evaluated two reforms of the unemployment insurance (UI) system: reemployment bonuses and job search programs. The bonus experiments show that economic incentives affect the length of UI receipt and provide weak evidence that an earlier return to work does not...

Benefit receipt in major household surveys is often under-reported. In recent years, as many as half of the dollars received through Food Stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Workers’ Compensation has not been reported in the Current Population Survey (CPS). High rates of...

Benefit receipt in major household surveys is often underreported. This understatement has major implications for our understanding of the economic circumstances of disadvantaged populations, program takeup, the distributional effects of government programs, and studies of other program effects....

This chapter examines the labor supply effects of social insurance programs. We argue that this topic deserves separate treatment from the rest of the labor supply literature because individuals may be imperfectly informed as to the rules of the programs and because key parameters are likely to...

Using research designs patterned after randomized experiments, many recent economic studies examine outcome measures for treatment groups and comparison groups that are not randomly assigned. By using variation in explanatory variables generated by changes in state laws, government draft...

We investigate well-being changes for single mother headed families targeted by recent tax and welfare reforms. Measured income changes sharply differ from consumption changes. We examine disaggregated consumption, time use, and health insurance coverage. Increases in housing and transportation...

Black entrepreneurship has been unsuccessful in the U.S. The fraction of employed blacks that work in their own businesses is about one-third that of whites. Other measures of success such as net income, number of employees, and form of organization show large differences between blacks and...