Research Papers

We designed and implemented a comprehensive workplace wellness program for a large employer with over 12,000 employees, randomly assigning program eligibility and financial incentives at the individual level.

We sought to determine whether workplace wellness programs effectively reduce medical spending, boost productivity, and improve employee well-being, addressing the gap in evidence supporting these claims.

Our results indicate that while these programs may not directly reduce costs or enhance productivity, they could still benefit employers by attracting and retaining healthier, lower-cost employees, potentially leading to net savings.

We developed a method to estimate the effect of kinked or notched budget sets on workers’ employment decisions and applied it to the Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Annual Earnings Test (AET).

We aimed to understand how the AET, which reduces OASI benefits based on earnings, influences employment rates, using a Regression Kink Design and Social Security Administration data.

Our findings show that the AET significantly reduces employment, providing valuable insights for policymakers on the labor market effects of benefit reduction policies.

We investigated the effects of merit aid scholarship programs on the migratory patterns and educational outcomes of skilled labor, using Census data on 24 to 32-year-olds in the U.S. from 1990 to 2010.

We aimed to understand whether subsidizing higher education through merit aid can retain high-achieving students in-state and influence their long-term residency and educational attainment.

Our findings suggest that while merit aid slightly increases the likelihood of state natives remaining in-state and extends in-state enrollment, it does not significantly change the share of a cohort living in-state with a BA, questioning the overall effectiveness of such programs in altering skilled labor migration.

We examined the impact of pension plan type on employee mobility by leveraging a natural experiment where an employer transitioned from a defined benefit (DB) plan to a defined contribution (DC) plan, influenced by default rules.

We aimed to determine if the observed relationship between plan type and employee mobility is due to selection, where employees with higher mobility tendencies may self-select into DC plans.

Our findings reveal that employees with higher mobility tendencies indeed self-select into DC plans, providing important insights for employers and policymakers about the role of pension plan types in workforce dynamics and mobility.

We examined the exclusion restriction assumption in interpreting IV estimates as a local average treatment effect (LATE) and highlighted cases where this assumption may be violated among inframarginal agents.

We aimed to identify and address potential biases in IV estimates due to violations of the exclusion restriction, which can affect the validity of LATE interpretations, especially among always- and never-takers.

Our findings underscore the need for careful consideration and potential adjustments in IV estimates to ensure accurate interpretations, thereby improving the reliability of econometric analyses involving heterogeneous treatment effects.

We conducted a field experiment to test theories of time-inconsistency, specifically the “Beta-Delta” model of present bias, in the context of saving decisions made by low-income tax filers.

We aimed to understand how present-biased preferences influence the decision to deposit tax refunds into illiquid accounts, providing insights into the tradeoff between immediate and delayed payments.

Our findings provide evidence of significant present bias in financial decisions, with an estimated annual discount rate of 164%, offering valuable implications for designing policies and interventions to encourage saving among low-income individuals.

We examined the inertia in taxpayers’ adjustments to income tax prepayments following changes in tax liability, analyzing how taxpayers’ prepayments change over time.

We aimed to investigate why many US taxpayers receive income tax refunds and to explore the role of inertia in their tax prepayment behavior, beyond the previously suggested precautionary and forced savings motives.

Our findings indicate that default withholding rules significantly impact consumption smoothing, especially for low-income taxpayers, suggesting that policies around withholding can have broader economic implications than previously understood.

We conducted a field experiment to reduce information, administrative, stigma, and procrastination costs associated with the Advance EITC, and simultaneously encouraged 401(k) savings to observe their effects on participation rates.

We aimed to understand the low participation rates in the Advance EITC and to explore whether encouraging 401(k) savings would influence the decision to participate in the Advance EITC, shedding light on the motives behind these financial choices.

Our findings suggest that EITC recipients actively choose to forgo the Advance, and the lack of increased participation with 401(k) encouragement challenges the notion of long-term forced savings motives, highlighting the need for further research into the underlying preferences and behaviors.