College students now use various forms of unsecured credit such as private student loans and credit cards to finance college. Access to these credit lines and the interest rates charged on these loans can vary significantly across credit scores. In this paper, we analyze if credit status, as...

This paper studies the impacts of withdrawing from and failing a course, relative to successful completion, on persistence for community college students. We leverage random assignment of students to instructors for identification. Withdrawing from a course reduces the probability of persistence...

There are a myriad of economic and non-economic forces behind the decision to migrate. Migrants can be "pushed" out of their home countries due to deteriorating economic conditions or political unrest. Conversely, migrants are often "pulled" into destinations that offer high wages, good health...

In this paper, I will describe in detail both the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit in the U.S., including their origins, their structure, and the effects they have on the labor market and family formation. I will then discuss the macroeconomic implications of U.S. welfare...

With worldwide migration becoming increasingly prevalent in policy agendas over the past several decades, understanding the effects that migrants have on a host country's population continues to be an important research agenda. There is a large literature documenting the effects that migrants...

We use a gravity model of migration and alternative estimation strategies to analyse how income differentials affect the flow of immigrants into U.S. states using annual data from the American Community Survey. We add to existing literature by decomposing income differentials into short- and...

Very little is understood about how immigrants affect the happiness, or subjective well-being of natives. We use the European Social Survey to analyze the effects of aggregate immigration flows on the subjective well-being of native-born populations in a panel of 26 countries between 2002 and...

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the single most important transfer program in place in the United States. An aspect of the EITC that has received little attention thus far is its role as a public insurance program. Yet, the structure of the EITC necessarily protects its primary class of...

There are a myriad of economic and non-economic forces behind the decision to migrate. Migrants can be “pushed” out of their home countries due to deteriorating economic conditions or political unrest. Conversely, migrants are often “pulled” into destinations that offer high wages, good...