There is increasing interest in expanding Medicare health insurance coverage in the U.S., but it is not clear whether the current program is the right foundation on which to build. Traditional Medicare covers a uniformset of benefits for all income groups and provides more generous access to...

When TANF replaced AFDC in 1996 the marginal subsidy for state welfare spending was eliminated. This paper exploits data from a period in the history of AFDC when the structure of federal subsidies and legislative changes allow us to estimate not only the price and income elasticities of federal...

This paper estimates the degree to which state spending is influenced by the spending of neighboring states. Focusing on mandated increases in welfare spending, I find that each dollar of state spending causes spending in neighboring states to increase by 37 to 88 cents. I use more plausibly...

Control of public spending and revenues is increasingly being left to states and localities. In order to understand the consequences of such a movement on the distribution of social spending, it is necessary to understand how fiscal distress will affect state and local budgets. This paper...

Many observers believe current aging baby boomers are woefully unprepared for retirement. Others raise the prospect that Americans are saving too much for retirement. This paper attempts to reconcile these contrasting views using a simple life cycle model and a more sophisticated retirement...

Do housing price fluctuations play an important role in the economic security of retirees, or is housing wealth just a sideshow to the determination of consumption and saving? Using panel data on saving from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and aggregate time- series data, I find that shifts...

Recent legislative proposals have included restoring Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) to their pre-1987 eligibility rules. Whether IRAs are simply tax windfalls with no effect on saving, or whether IRAs stimulate saving, is a crucial issue in evaluating the effectiveness of such proposals....

The efficient markets hypothesis has dominated modern research on asset prices. Asset prices and their intrinsic values differ in inefficient financial markets but difficulties in the measurement of intrinsic value greatly complicate market efficiency tests. Reflections on the measurement of...

Housing assets comprise nearly one-third of household wealth rot effectively escape income taxation. When housing is included in the life cycle model, the capital income tax is shown to be far more distortionary than previously thought. The reason is that capital income taxation stimulates the...

The recent appreciation in housing value can have large effects on aggregate saving. This paper uses a simulation model to show that aggregate saving will decline substantially if life cycle homeowners spend down their housing windfalls. Homeowners with a bequest motive, however, may save more...