The high degree of fiscal stress experienced by state governments in the 2001 and the 2007-2009 recessions has prompted renewed discussions of alternative approaches to stabilizing state finances over the business cycle. Prompted by evidence of increased state tax revenue cyclicality in the...

This paper examines the long-term earnings consequences of permanent layoffs initiated during the early 1990s, using a sample of Massachusetts workers who enrolled in Job Training Partnership Act Title III programs, and who remained strongly attached to the state's labor force. The comparison...

This study develops a flexible, citations-adjusted ranking technique that allows a specified set of journals to be evaluated using a wide range of alternative criteria. As a result, the set of evaluated journals is not constrained to be identical to the set of evaluating journals. We also draw a...

While there is a new and rapidly growing literature on the effects of climatic factors on economic and social outcomes, little research has been conducted to understand the fiscal impact of weather, especially at the sub-state level. Using data from Massachusetts municipalities from 1990 through...

This paper is the first to empirically examine the impact of a man-made disaster on consumer credit outcomes. It uses the 2018 Merrimack Valley natural gas explosions as a quasi-random natural experiment and shows that the explosions had a temporary negative effect on debt balances, credit...

This paper develops a new measure of state and local fiscal sustainability called the "trend gap," which is based on socioeconomic and other fundamental factors and removes the short-term influence of the business cycle. The paper estimates the trend gap and finds that the nationwide per capita...

Many studies have documented the pervasive underfunding of public sector pension plans in the United States in recent years. The deterioration of the funded status of public pension plans coincided with severe fiscal crises that state and local governments experienced in the 2000s. This...

Rainy day funds (RDFs) are potentially an important countercyclical tool for states to stabilize their budgets and the overall economy during economic downturns. However, U.S. states have often found themselves exhausting their RDFs and having to raise tax rates or reduce expenditure while still...

Using a cost-capacity gap framework, this paper is the first study to quantify nonschool fiscal disparities across Connecticut municipalities. In the absence of a Uniform Chart of Accounts for municipalities, the paper uses a newly assembled dataset of multi-year local financial records,...

Many regard the 2010-2012 Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) Reform as a national model to improve ex-offenders' labor market outcomes. This reform prohibits most employers from inquiring about an individual's criminal history on the initial job application (the "ban the...