Programs that provide lower-skill employment are a popular anti-poverty strategy in developing countries, with India's employment-guarantee program (MGNREGA) employing adults in 23% of Indian households. MGNREGA has reduced rural poverty, but some have raised concerns that guaranteeing...

Policymakers frequently use price regulations as a response to inequality in the markets they control. In this paper, we examine the optimal structure of such policies from the perspective of mechanism design. We study a buyer-seller market in which agents have private information about both...

We investigate whether legacy U.S. airlines communicated via earnings calls to coordinate with other legacy airlines in offering fewer seats on competitive routes. To this end, we first use text analytics to build a novel dataset on communication among airlines about their capacity choices....

This paper analyzes a regulator's optimal strategic delay of resolving banks when a resolution causes inefficiencies. The regulator observes depositors' withdrawals at the bank level and needs to decide on how many withdrawals to tolerate before intervening to impose a mandatory stay. The...

Insurers sell retail financial products called variable annuities that package mutual funds with minimum return guarantees over long horizons. Variable annuities accounted for $1.5 trillion or 35% of U.S. life insurer liabilities in 2015. Sales decreased and fees increased after the 2008...

Abstract Expressionism famously shifted the center of the advanced art world from Paris to New York. The triumph of Abstract Expressionism, and its subsequent abrupt decline in the face of Pop Art, are familiar tales in the literature of art history. Econometric analysis of evidence from auction...

It is taken as given by many policy makers that Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of prescription drugs drives inappropriate patients to treatment. Alternatively, advertising may provide useful information that causes appropriate patients to seek treatment. I study this dynamic in the context of...

A representative investor confronts two levels of model uncertainty. The investor has a set of well defined parametric “structured models” but does not know which of them is best. The investor also suspects that all of the structured models are misspecified. These uncertainties about...

I examine the effects of occupational licensing on the quality of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs). I exploit the staggered adoption of the 150-hour rule, which increased the educational requirements for a CPA license. My analysis shows that the rule reduces the number of entrants into the...

This paper formulates and estimates a dynamic model of health, addiction, education, and wealth in order to understand the well-established positive empirical relationship between education and health. In our model, agents make decisions on schooling, consumption of addictive goods, and...