Would the value of unemployment insurance fall if more people had a buffer stock of liquid savings? Using quasi-experimental evidence from the unexpected introduction of home equity loans in Denmark, where public unemployment insurance is voluntary, we find that liquidity and insurance are...

We evaluate policies to increase prosocial behavior using a field experiment with 1,500 referees at the Journal of Public Economics. We randomly assign referees to four groups: a control group with a six week deadline to submit a referee report, a group with a four week deadline, a cash...

This paper examines the empirical question of whether subjects? static choices among rewards received at different times are influenced by their expected income levels at those times. Moreover, we recover time preferences after compensating for possible income effects. Besides eliciting...

Facing risk, people take precautions by insuring themselves through both formal and informal insurance channels. But are private savings merely an inferior, dominated alterna- tive to formal insurance schemes, or are the two options mutual substitutes? To answer this question, we exploit that a...

We study the taxation of the minimum wage in an environment with imperfect enforcement and informality. We leverage an increase in the audit threat for earnings below a reporting threshold at twice the minimum wage in Hungary and estimate reporting and employment responses with administrative...

Exploiting a change in reporting defaults and the implied audit threat in Hungary, we demonstrate that a substantial portion of employees and the self-employed reporting to earn the minimum wage have much higher earnings in reality. This can be seen from their sharp but temporary jump to the new...

Using data on roll calls from the U.S. House of Representatives, this paper finds empirical support for informational theories of legislative decision-making. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, the bias of the committee a bill gets assigned to is strongly positively associated with the...

This Supplementary Appendix contains the English translations of the experimental questionnaire, survey questions, and instructions that were used in our experimental sessions on June 9th and 10th of 2010. For the original Icelandic language documents, please contact the authors.The paper...

This paper studies tax evasion and the contribution-benefit link in the context of maternity benefits in Hungary. Earnings and employment patterns suggest pre-pregnancy underreporting, followed by formalization of some earnings and employment during pregnancy to increase benefits. Reported...