In the early 1990s, New Zealand cut benefits and tightened eligibility criteria under its main social welfare programmes. These benefit changes varied substantially across both time and demographic groups. Synthetic panel data are used econometrically to isolate the effects of these reforms on...

Consistent with recent empirical work, this study finds no evidence of the "added worker effect" among married couples in the U.S. It is hypothesized that unobserved variables may be obscuring this added worker behavior. This hypothesis is rejected. The labor supply behavior of married women is...

A framework is developed in which inflation biases with different target variables are compared. A nominal growth target measured in consumer prices may yield less stabilization bias than a nominal income growth target. Exchange rate and inflation targets result in less stabilization bias than...