This paper examines the economic foundations of three criteria used for evaluating the costs and benefits of social programs. Some criteria do not consider the scale of programs or address the costs associated with programs that expand or contract the total government budget. A recent addition...

We use the Mexican labor market structure to price the set of fringe benefits that household heads receive when formally employed. We exploit longitudinal, nationally-representative information on household heads who are formal, informal, or switch status at least once in our data. Using monthly...