This policy study uses U.S. Census microdata to evaluate how subsidies for universal telephone service vary in their impact across low-income racial groups, gender, age, and home ownership. Our demand specification includes both the subsidized monthly price (Lifeline program) and the subsidized...

We estimate the economic surplus created by Medicare Advantage under its reformed competitive bidding rules. We use data on the universe of Medicare beneficiaries, and develop a model of plan bidding that accounts for both market power and risk selection. We find that private plans have costs...

New mobile development platforms are a 21st-century growth pole. By successfully recombining existing information technologies with new innovations, they have spurred a positive feedback loop of consumer adoption of mobile devices and firm entry into a wide variety of applications, or...

We estimate how physicians’ financial incentives affect their treatment choices in heart attack management, using a large dataset of private health insurance claims. Different insurance plans pay physicians different amounts for the same services, generating the required variation in...

Participants in defined contribution (DC) retirement plans rarely adjust their portfolio allocations, suggesting that their investment choices and consequent money flows are sticky and not discerning. Yet, the participants’ inertia could be offset by the DC plan sponsors, who adjust the...

This paper investigates the oft-repeated claim that delayed retirement by older workers will result in higher unemployment among the young, a claim which has garnered increased attention in the media in the United States and which drives retirement policy in China. Using 1977-2011 data from the...

In an effort to combat childhood obesity, many schools have banned the sale of carbonated beverages on school grounds. I evaluate the effectiveness of these measures by investigating their impact on household carbonated beverage consumption. I match households in Nielsen Homescan Data to their...

In 2012 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD 2012a) issued an assessment of Mexico’s telecommunications industry. This report concluded that the performance of the sector, while improved, remains below attainable goals, and that the causes of the performance...

Recently, we evaluated a fiscal consolidation strategy for the United States that would bring the government budget into balance by gradually reducing government spending relative to GDP to the ratio that prevailed prior to the crisis (Cogan et al, JEDC 2013). Specifically, we published an...

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included $7 billion for broadband development. We highlight two endemic problems with the rural subsidy programs managed by NTIA: 1) There is little economic rationale for subsidizing rural areas; and 2) NTIA’s mechanism for selecting projects...