A sizable number of localities have in recent years limited the use of criminal background checks in hiring decisions, or "banned the box." Using LEHD Origin-Destination Employment and American Community Survey data, we show that these bans increased employment of residents in high-crime...

Federal legislation to legalize, regulate, and tax cannabis could have significant impacts on the federal budget. While the specific details of any potential cannabis legalization legislation are unknown at present, such reforms are likely to affect both tax receipts and federal outlays through...

Our purpose is three-fold. First, we summarize some of the core insights from both classic and more recent papers in the literature on the role of intergovernmental grants in systems of fiscal federalism. Second, we provide an updated look at some of the key institutions through which...

We assess the Covid-19 pandemic's implications for state government sales and income tax revenues. We estimate that the economic declines implied by recent forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office will lead to a shortfall of roughly $106 billion in states' sales and income tax revenues for...

We propose a model of voter decision-making in proportional representation systems: ultra-rational strategic voters construct expectations of coalitions and policy outcomes based on expected seat distributions and vote to maximize their expected utility from the implemented policy. We examine...

COVID-19 relief legislation offers a unique setting to study how political representation shapes the distribution of federal assistance to state and local governments. We provide evidence of a substantial small-state bias: an additional Senator or Representative per million residents predicts an...

Veuger and Shoag study the local economic spillovers generated by LeBron James' presence on a team in the National Basketball Association. They trace the impact a star of Mr. James' caliber can have on economic activity by analyzing the impact his departures and arrivals had on business activity...

We describe the broad range of uncertainties faced by the developers of medical technologies. Empirically, we estimate the asset market incidence of two realizations of uncertainties we classify as within-market policy risks. The events we analyze concern the intellectual property of Myriad...

We analyze the extent to which US federal aid to state and local governments during the COVID-19 pandemic had effects that spilled over across state lines. We find that federal assistance had a positive overall effect on state and local government employment that stems largely from the direct...

Is the COVID-19 driven surge in remote work temporary or permanent? To assess how the geography of work may evolve, we analyze the pre-pandemic status quo. Casual theorizing might suggest that workers with teleworkable jobs in the pre-pandemic era were more likely to live in the less dense,...