The standard economic view of the personal income tax is that it is a distortionary way of raising revenue which nonetheless has value because it tends to increase equality. However, when wages deviate from marginal product, the laissez-faire equilibrium is inefficient, and there can be an...

A common finding of the optimal unemployment insurance literature is that the optimal UI replacement rate is around 50%, implying that current levels in the US are close to optimal. However, a key assumption in the existing literature is that unemployment benefits are the only government...

A growing literature on substitution between social programs provides consistent evidence that changes in the generosity of one program can lead to changes in enrollment on other programs. However, this evidence has been ignored in welfare analyses of social insurance programs. I demonstrate...

A large body of theoretical and empirical research focuses on two very different rationales for government subsidies to college students: positive fiscal externalities from greater human capital accumulation and a larger income tax base, and the existence of liquidity constraints among student...

The standard economic view of the personal income tax is that it is a distortionary way of raising revenue which nonetheless has value because it tends to increase equality. However, when wages deviate from marginal product, the laissez-faire equilibrium is inefficient, and there can be an...

A growing literature on substitution between social programs provides consistent evidence that changes in the generosity of one program can lead to changes in enrollment on other programs. However, this evidence has been ignored in welfare analyses of social insurance programs. I demonstrate...

A growing literature documents links between early-life health and human capital, and between human capital and adult wages. Although most of this literature has focused on developed countries, economists have hypothesized that effects of early-life health on adult economic outcomes could be...

A vast literature studies the optimal design and generosity of unemployment insurance (UI). However, UI is just one of the variety of programs used in developed countries around the world to deal with unemployment, though unemployment programs other than UI have been subjected to much less...

The overconsumption of sugar is a significant problem in many jurisdictions, and one possible method to remedy this problem is the taxation of sugarsweetened beverages (SSBs). To be able to implement an optimal tax, it is important to know the preferences and price sensitivity of consumers. This...

It would be hard, even today, to deny that labour unions are important economic institutions, and it is this importance that makes their consequences for efficiency so substantial. Interest in the economic analysis of unions was revived in the early 1980s, in large part by a paper by Ian...