Abstract We develop a framework for welfare analysis of interventions designed to increase take-up of social safety net programs in the presence of potential behavioral biases. We calibrate the key parameters using a randomized field experiment in which 30,000 elderly individuals not enrolled in—but likely eligible for—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are either provided with information that they are likely eligible, provided with this information and offered assistance in applying, or are in a “status quo” control group. Only 6% of the control group enrolls in SNAP over the next nine months, compared to 11% of the Information Only group and 18% of the Information Plus Assistance group. The individuals who apply or enroll in response to either intervention have higher net income and are less sick than the average enrollee in the control group. We present evidence consistent with the existence of optimization frictions that are greater for needier individuals, which suggests that the poor targeting properties of the interventions reduce their welfare benefits.

Abstract This paper studies commodity taxation in a model featuring heterogeneous consumers, imperfect competition, and tax salience. We derive new formulas for the incidence and marginal excess burden of commodity taxation highlighting interactions between tax salience and market structure. We estimate the necessary inputs to the formulas by using Nielsen Retail Scanner and Consumer Panel data covering grocery stores and households in the U.S. and detailed sales tax data. We estimate a large amount of pass-through of taxes onto consumer prices and find that households respond more to changes in prices than taxes. We also estimate significant heterogeneity in tax salience across households. We calibrate our new formulas using these results and conclude that essentially all of the incidence of sales taxes falls on consumers, and the marginal excess burden of taxation is larger than estimates based on standard formulas that ignore imperfect competition and tax salience.

We compare patterns of unemployment between Canada and the United States during the Great Recession. We document a rise in long-term unemployment in Canada, similar to findings in earlier work. We consider an extended matching model using restricted-access data from the Canadian Labour Force Survey, which contains information on time since last job for both unemployed and nonparticipants. We create a new historical vacancy series for Canada based on relative employment in “recruiting industries” to construct a monthly Beveridge curve for Canada. Allowing for duration dependence in flows between unemployment and nonparticipation is crucial for explaining long-term joblessness.

Abstract We study the effect of public health insurance on labor supply by exploiting a large public health insurance disenrollment. In 2005, approximately 170,000 Tennessee residents abruptly lost Medicaid coverage. Using both across- and within-state variation in exposure to the disenrollment, we estimate large increases in labor supply, primarily along the extensive margin. The increased employment is concentrated among individuals working at least 20 hours a week and receiving private, employer-provided health insurance. We explore the dynamic effects of the disenrollment and find an immediate increase in job search behavior and a steady rise in both employment and health insurance coverage following the disenrollment. Our results are consistent with a significant degree of “employment lock”—workers who are employed primarily to secure private health insurance coverage.

Abstract This article studies the role of employer behavior in generating “negative duration dependence”—the adverse effect of a longer unemployment spell—by sending fictitious résumés to real job postings in 100 U.S. cities. Our results indicate that the likelihood of receiving a callback for an interview significantly decreases with the length of a worker’s unemployment spell, with the majority of this decline occurring during the first eight months. We explore how this effect varies with local labor market conditions and find that duration dependence is stronger when the local labor market is tighter. This result is consistent with the prediction of a broad class of screening models in which employers use the unemployment spell length as a signal of unobserved productivity and recognize that this signal is less informative in weak labor markets.

We study how the recent housing boom and bust affected college enrollment during the 2000s. We exploit cross-city variation in local housing booms, which improved labor market opportunities for young men and women. We find that the boom lowered college enrollment, with effects concentrated at two-year colleges. The decline in enrollment during the boom was generally reversed during the bust; however, attainment remains persistently low for particular cohorts, suggesting that reduced educational attainment is an enduring effect of the recent housing cycle. The housing boom can account for approximately 25 percent of the recent slowdown in college attainment. (JEL I23, I25, J24, J31, R21, R31)

We study the effect of wealth on labor supply using the randomized assignment of monetary prizes in a large sample of Swedish lottery players. Winning a lottery prize modestly reduces earnings, with the reduction being immediate, persistent, and quite similar by age, education, and sex. A calibrated dynamic model implies lifetime marginal propensities to earn out of unearned income from −0.17 at age 20 to −0.04 at age 60, and labor supply elasticities in the lower range of previously reported estimates. The earnings response is stronger for winners than their spouses, which is inconsistent with unitary household labor supply models. (JEL D14, J22, J31)