This paper studies the optimal design of social insurance programs for disabled workers by developing and estimating an equilibrium labor search model with screening contracts. In the model, firms may strategically use employment contracts, consisting of wage and job amenities, to screen out the...

This paper studies the optimal design of social insurance programs for disabled workers by developing and estimating an equilibrium labor search model with screening contracts. In the model, firms may strategically use employment contracts, consisting of wage and job amenities, to screen out the...

Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is an employment protection policy for disabled workers. By exploiting cross-state variation in pre-ADA legislation, we measure the effects of the law on transition rates of disabled workers. We find a decline in employment-to-non-employment...

We study the aggregate consequences of the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) program, focusing on the role of complementarity between heterogeneous human capital. First, we develop and estimate a wage process in which individuals' human capital is composed of (pure) labor and experience,...

This paper constructs a dynamic model of health insurance to evaluate the short- and long run effects of policies that prevent firms from conditioning wages on health conditions of their workers, and that prevent health insurance companies from charging individuals with adverse health conditions...

This paper develops and estimates a life‐cycle equilibrium labor search model in which heterogeneous firms determine health insurance provisions and heterogeneous workers sort themselves into jobs with different compensation packages over the life cycle. I study the optimal joint design of...