The ratio of the yields on short‐term tax‐exempt and taxable bonds exhibits a sawtooth pattern that is consistent with the impacts of tax deferments from dates on which interest payments are received to dates on which the resulting tax payments are paid. The effect of the tax deferment at turns of calendar years does not differ appreciably from the effect at the turn of any other tax quarter. Investors with tax payment schedules that differ from that of the investor that is indifferent between investing in taxable and tax‐exempt bonds may benefit from tax‐related timing strategies for investing in these bonds. Issuers may benefit from tax‐related timing strategies for scheduling interest payments.

Much of the research on corporate restructuring has examined the causes and aftermath of extreme changes in corporate governance such as takeovers and bankruptcy. In contrast, we study restructurings initiated in response to product market pressures by “normal” corporate governance mechanisms. Such “voluntary” restructurings, motivated by the discipline of the product market and internal corporate controls, will play a relatively more important role in the 1990s due to a weakening in the discipline of the takeover market. Our data suggest that the firms retrenched quickly and, on average, increased their focus. There is no evidence of abnormally high levels of forced turnover in top managers. There is, however, a significant and rapid cut of 5% in the labor force. Further, the cost of goods sold to sales and labor costs to sales ratios both decline rapidly, more than 5% in the first two years after the negative earnings. The firms cut research and development, increased investment, and also reduced their debt/asset level by over 8% in the first year after the negative earnings. We also document the reasons management and analysis reported for the negative earnings. Overwhelmingly the firms blame bad economic conditions and, to a lesser extent, foreign competition.

We combine quasi-experimental variation in spousal death and age eligibility for survivors benefits using US tax records to study the effects on American households’ labor supply and the design of social security’s survivors insurance. Benefit eligibility at the exact age of 60 induces sharp reductions in the labor supply of newly widowed households, highlighting the value of survivors benefits and the liquidity they provide following the shock. Among eligible widows, the spousal death event induces no increases in labor supply, suggesting little residual need to self-insure. Using theory, we underscore the program’s protective insurance role and its high valuation among survivors.

We investigate the effect of welfare reform on intergenerational welfare participation, using mother-daughter pairs in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find that a mother’s Aid to Families with Dependent Children/Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (AFDC/TANF) participation increased her daughter’s odds of adult participation in that program by roughly 25 percentage points or more, but that welfare reform attenuated this transmission by at least 50%. However, there is no diminution of transmission after welfare reform when we consider the wider safety net or other outcomes. Daughters who grew up with mothers on AFDC/TANF were no better off after reform, with substitution toward other welfare programs over generations.

We develop a set of frameworks for welfare analysis of Medicaid and apply them to the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, a Medicaid expansion for low-income, uninsured adults that occurred via random assignment. Across different approaches, we estimate recipient willingness to pay for Medicaid between $0.5 and $1.2 per dollar of the resource cost of providing Medicaid; estimates of the expected transfer Medicaid provides to recipients are relatively stable across approaches, but estimates of its additional value from risk protection are more variable. We also estimate that the resource cost of providing Medicaid to an additional recipient is only 40% of Medicaid's total cost; 60% of Medicaid spending is a transfer to providers of uncompensated care for the low-income uninsured.

Experimental economists currently lack a convention for how to pay subjects in experiments with multiple tasks. We provide a theoretical framework for analyzing this question. Assuming statewise monotonicity and nothing else, we prove that paying for one randomly chosen problem—the random problem selection mechanism—is essentially the only incentive compatible mechanism. Paying for every period is similarly justified when we assume only a “no complementarities at the top” condition. To help experimenters decide which is appropriate for their particular experiment, we discuss empirical tests of these two assumptions.

The question of whether higherlifetime income households save a larger fraction of their income was the subject of much debate in the 1950s and 1960s, and while not resolved, it remains central to the evaluation of tax and macroeconomic policies. We resolve this long-standing question using new empirical methods applied to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Survey of Consumer Finances, and the Consumer Expenditure Survey. We find a strong positive relationship between saving rates and lifetime income and a weaker but still positive relationship between the marginal propensity to save and lifetime income. There is little support for theories that seek to explain these positive correlations by relying solely on time preference rates, nonhomothetic preferences, or variations in Social Security benefits. There is more support for models emphasizing uncertainty with respect to income and health expenses, bequest motives, and asset-based means testing or behavioral factors causing minimal saving rates among low-income households.

Platform-based information sharing among competing firms presents challenges for antitrust authorities, yet effective remedies remain unclear. Drawing inspiration from the Informed Sources retail gasoline antitrust case, we develop a theoretical model that offers policy guidance for disrupting anticompetitive coordination facilitated through price-sharing platforms. Removing only one firm from a platform may be ineffective for disrupting such coordination. However, competitive benefits can emerge if (i) at least two firms lack platform access, and (ii) the costs of price leadership are sufficiently high. More broadly, coordinating price increases becomes more difficult when multiple firms cannot quickly observe or respond to rivals' prices.