Taxation of cigarettes and alcohol can raise revenue and reduce consumption of goods with negative external effects. Despite medical and psychological evidence linking their consumption, little previous work has investigated the significance of cross-price effects in cigarette and alcohol...

A strong association between lower socioeconomic status (SES) and worse health-- the SES-health gradient-- has been documented in many countries, but little work has compared the size of the gradient across countries. We compare the size of the income gradient in self-reported health in the US...

We investigate the effect of universal health insurance on health outcome and the use of health services by exploiting a natural experiment that changes the insurance status of most Americans at age 65; that is, eligibility for the U.S. Medicare program. We compare inequalities in health and...

The impact of public infrastructure investment on the productive performance of firms has been an important focus of the recent literature on productivity growth. The size of this impact has important implications for policymakers' decisions to invest in public capital, and productivity...

Researchers, commentators, and politicians have devoted steadily more attention to infrastructure in response to claims that inadequate accumulation of public capital has contributed to substandard U.S. economic growth. Despite this, the link between infrastructure and productivity growth...

Is public sector infrastructure a key determinant of productivity? Traditional, project-based analyses of benefits and costs typically do not find large rates of return. Proponents of infrastructure spending instead point to regression-based analyses of the links between private productivity and...

This paper examines the relationship between the timing of SNAP benefit payments and participation in school lunch and breakfast using the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS). An event study approach examines participation over the five-day window before and after...

This paper examines New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). SYEP provides jobs to youth ages 14-24, and due to high demand for summer jobs, allocates slots through a random lottery system. We match student-level data from the SYEP program with educational records from the NYC...

The human capital construct is deep in the bones of economics and finds reference by many classical economists, even if they did not use the phrase. The term “human capital,” seldom mentioned in economics before the 1950s, increased starting in the 1960s and blossomed in the 1990s. The...