In order to study whether public pension systems displace private saving, we use the quasi-experimental variation in pension wealth created by Poland's 1999 pension reform. Using the 1997-2003 Polish Household Budget Surveys, we begin by estimating “difference-in-differences” regressions,...

In order to study whether public pension systems displace private saving, we use the quasiexperimental variation in pension wealth created by Poland's 1999 pension reform. Using the 1997-2003 Polish Household Budget Surveys, we begin by estimating "difference-indifferences" regressions, where we...

This paper studies the link between hourly wages and workers' subjective assessments of how easy it would be to find another job as good as the present one, and how easy it would be for an employer to replace an employee. First, using high-quality data, I study the correlates of these two...

The importance of consumer confidence in stimulating economic activity is a disputed issue in macroeconomics. Do changes in confidence represent autonomous fluctuations in optimism, independent of information on economic fundamentals, or are they a reflection of economic news? I study this...

We use a regression-discontinuity design to study the effects of double blocking sixth-grade students in reading and mathematics on their achievement across three years of middle school. To identify the effect of the intervention, we use sharp cutoffs in the test scores used to assign students...

We estimate the effects on postsecondary education outcomes of the Kalamazoo Promise, a generous place-based college scholarship. We identify Promise effects using difference-indifferences, comparing eligible to ineligible graduates before and after the Promise's initiation. According to our...

This paper uses tax rebate payments from the 2008 economic stimulus to estimate the effect of a one-time change in income on three measures of subjective well-being: life satisfaction, health satisfaction, and affect. The income effect is identified by exploiting the plausibly exogenous...

As the costs of higher education rise, many communities have begun to adopt their own financial aid strategy: place-based scholarships for students graduating from the local school district. Some place-based scholarships impose merit- and/or need-based restrictions, while others require little...

This paper examines the degree of substitution between public pension wealth and private saving by studying Poland's 1999 pension reform. The analysis identifies the effect of pension wealth on private saving using cohort-by-time variation in pension wealth induced by the reform. The estimates,...

We estimate the earnings losses of a cohort of workers displaced during the Great Recession and decompose those long-term losses into components attributable to fewer work hours and to reduced hourly wage rates. We also examine the extent to which the reduced earnings, work hours, and wages of...