Public Finance

We explore how teachers unions affect education production by comparing outcomes between districts allocating new tax revenue amidst …

Since the beginning of the all-volunteer era, millions of young Americans have chosen to enlist in the military. These volunteers …

This paper explores the role of social interactions on a youth’s decision to begin smoking. Specifically, we estimate the effect of cigarette taxes during early childhood on beginning smoking later in adolescence in a discrete-time hazard model.

In this paper, I estimate the effect of education spending on district-level student outcomes in 24 states by leveraging changes in revenue driven by property value variation. I find that a 10 percent increase in spending improves graduation rates by 3 to 5 percentage points and student test scores by 0.07 to 0.09 standard deviations. This suggests that market variation in property values affects student outcomes through existing school finance formulas.

We explore how teachers unions affect education production by comparing outcomes between districts allocating new tax revenue amidst …

Over the past half-century, court-ordered increases in public school spending dramatically changed the level and distribution of school resources in the United States. Recent evidence from surveys suggests that school finance reforms improved students’ short- and long-run outcomes.

In this paper, we provide new evidence on the distribution of claims in the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program across employers and industries. We also relate SSDI claims to employer and employee wage premiums and discuss implications for measures of inequality.

Over the past half-century, court-ordered increases in public school spending dramatically changed the level and distribution of school resources in the United States. Recent evidence from surveys suggests that school finance reforms improved students’ short- and long-run outcomes.