Research Papers

We measured the impact of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend on price levels using a synthetic control method to compare Alaska with similar states before the dividend’s introduction.

We aimed to determine whether unconditional cash transfers, like the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, stimulate consumer spending and increase price levels.

Our findings help us understand the inflationary effects of unconditional cash transfers, informing policymakers about potential economic impacts and guiding future decisions on similar programs.

We followed 1,266 children in Chicago from birth through school entry, tracking their risk of lead exposure and neighborhood socioeconomic composition to estimate the joint effects on receptive vocabulary ability.

We aimed to address the gap in research on the impact of disadvantaged neighborhoods on cognitive development during early childhood, as most studies focus on school-age children or adolescents.

Our findings show that sustained exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods reduces vocabulary skills in early childhood through lead contamination. Understanding this causal pathway is crucial for developing interventions to improve cognitive outcomes for children in impoverished neighborhoods and addressing environmental health disparities, promoting better long-term educational and developmental prospects.

We used the Current Population Survey and a synthetic control method to examine the impact of the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend on employment and part-time work.

We aimed to assess whether the annual cash dividend influenced overall employment levels and part-time work, providing insights into the economic effects of universal cash transfers.

Our findings suggest that a universal and permanent cash transfer can stimulate the local economy without significantly decreasing aggregate employment, offering valuable evidence for policymakers considering similar programs.

We estimated the elasticity of consumption with respect to typical labor income shocks using firm-wide changes in monthly pay, and analyzed how this elasticity varies by wealth and race, using administrative bank account data.

We sought to understand the consumption responses to typical income fluctuations and explore how wealth and racial disparities affect consumption smoothing, addressing an open question about heterogeneity in consumption responses.

Our findings reveal significant racial disparities in consumption smoothing, with black and Hispanic households experiencing higher welfare costs from income volatility than white households, primarily due to differences in liquid wealth, offering insights into economic inequality and its impact on welfare.

We investigated the impact of the Social Security Annual Earnings Test (AET) on employment decisions of older Americans using a differences-in-differences design.

We aimed to understand how the AET, which reduces benefits for earnings above a certain amount, affects employment rates among older Americans nearing retirement age.

Our findings indicate that the AET significantly decreases employment rates among those aged 63-64, providing critical insights for policymakers on the labor market effects of Social Security policies.

We introduced a method to estimate the cost of adjusting earnings and the earnings elasticity with respect to the net-of-tax share, using bunching in the earnings distribution at convex budget set kinks before and after policy changes.

We sought to explore the relationship between tax policy changes and earnings adjustments, specifically focusing on the Social Security Earnings Test, to provide a clearer understanding of the behavioral responses to tax rate changes.

Our results highlight that adjustment costs can significantly dampen the short-run effects of changes in effective marginal tax rates, offering crucial insights for policymakers on the efficiency and impact of tax policy adjustments.

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 employed a novel rank-based index of stratification to measure how occupational classes occupy distinct, non-overlapping, hierarchical layers in the US income distribution from 1980 to 2016.

We aimed to address the gap in empirical studies that focus on inequality rather than stratification. By developing a rank-based stratification index, we sought to accurately capture class stratification and provide insights into the structural dynamics of the US income distribution over time, enhancing the understanding of class structure and social stratification.

Our findings show a substantial increase in class stratification in the US from 1980 to 2016, driven by factors like income returns to education, deunionization, and deindustrialization. These results highlight growing economic divides based on occupational class, informing theories of class structure and guiding policies to reduce economic stratification and promote social mobility.

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 empirically evaluated critiques of class analysis related to aggregate classes defined by workplace ownership and authority relations. We examined whether these classes differ from those based on the technical division of labor and assessed class differences in life conditions and political attitudes over time.

We aimed to address arguments that class differences have declined or decomposed into smaller occupational differences. By focusing on aggregate classes based on workplace ownership and authority, we sought to clarify whether these class distinctions remain significant and distinct from those based on the technical division of labor.

Our findings show that aggregate ownership-and-authority class differences in life conditions and political attitudes are significant and persistent, even within disaggregate occupational classes. These results challenge claims about the decline or decomposition of class perspectives and highlight the continued relevance of class analysis in understanding social and economic inequalities.