This report examines the scope of homelessness in New England and the potential role of subsidized housing in alleviating homelessness in the region. The report finds that the number of sheltered homeless families in Massachusetts and Vermont is on the rise, driving an increase in measured...

We utilize U.S. same-sex marriage legalization to reexamine the unresolved question of why married men earn higher wages than comparable unmarried men. If this marriage premium operates similarly for homosexual men as it does for heterosexual men, the newfound availability of same-sex marriage...

This paper explores the impact of foreign aid on economic growth using variation in aid inflows from natural disasters. Because using a country's own disaster exposure as an instrument for aid inflows violates exogeneity assumptions, I instead use the disaster exposure of a country's "aid...

This study uses the longitudinal design of the US Current Population Survey to describe sectoral mobility trends for workers before and after the emergence of COVID-19. We find a small increase in the 15-month rate of workers who switched industries following the onset of the pandemic, likely...

This paper compares the distortionary impact of larceny theft across different product markets, characterizing such crime as a “hidden tax” on producers or consumers. We estimate the size of this tax and how it is affected by exogenous changes in larceny rates driven by the enactment of...

This paper combines two components of the US Current Population Survey to characterize the relationship between job displacement and sectoral mobility for long-tenured workers over the 1996–2019 period: (1) the cross-sectional Displaced Worker Survey and (2) the 16-month longitudinal design of...

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic led state and local governments throughout New England and much of the nation to issue ordinances restricting activity that might otherwise contribute to the spread of the disease. Individuals also freely adjusted their behavior, hoping to reduce the...

We investigate the impact of rising educational attainment on wage inflation and the equilibrium (non-inflationary) rate of unemployment. Rising educational attainment may reduce wage pressures by shifting the composition of the labor force towards groups with lower equilibrium unemployment...