We estimate the effect of motherhood on wages using matching. We distinguish between net and direct effects. The net effect includes the total wage costs, whereas the direct represents the causal effect. Since covariates are likely affected by motherhood, the latter effect is not immediately...

A comprehensive data set on local telephone service prices is used to evaluate the effect of Lifeline and Linkup programs on the telephone penetration rates of low-income households in the United States. Lifeline and Linkup programs respectively subsidize the monthly subscription and initial...

The U.S. Social Security benefit structure implicitly creates disincentives towards working long careers. Workers near retirement often gain little additional benefit from continued work because of Social Securitythe benefit formula. This paper develops a framework to examine these disincentives...

This paper documents that, at the aggregate level, (i) real wages are positively correlated with output and, on average, lag output by about one quarter in emerging markets, while there are no systematic patterns in developed economies, (ii) real wage volatility (relative to output volatility)...

We present an original modeling tool that can be used to study the social mechanisms by which individual software developers’ efforts are allocated within large and complex open source projects. The dynamical agent-based model is first described analytically in a deterministic discrete choice...

The paper reconsiders the nature of mining districts and property rights during the California gold rush. According to a widely accepted view advanced by Umbeck (1977, 1981), in the absence of effective legal authority, district codes established secure property rights in mining claims. Such...

An important element in considering school finance policies is that households are not passive but instead respond to policies. Household behavior is especially important in considering how households affect the spatial structure of metropolitan areas where different jurisdictions incorporate...

Many individuals who are eligible for welfare choose not to participate. This well-documented fact suggests that there is a utility cost associated with welfare participation. Previous studies have produced estimates of how large this cost would have to be to explain the observed degree of...

Government policies that are based on age do not adjust to changes in remaining life expectancy and lower mortality risk relative to earlier time periods due to improvements in mortality. We examine four possible methods for adjusting the eligibility ages for Social Security, Medicare, and...

In the 1988-2004 micro data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for the CPI, price changes are frequent (every 4-7 months, depending on the treatment of sale prices) and large in absolute value (on the order of 10%). The size and timing of price changes varies considerably for a...