Despite facing some of the same challenges as private insurance markets, little is known about the role of adverse selection in social insurance programs. This paper studies adverse selection in Social Security retirement choices using data from the Health and Retirement Study. We find robust...

We develop a two-sided directed search model of relationship formation that can be used to disentangle male and female preferences over partner characteristics and over relationship terms from only a cross section of observed matches. Individuals direct their search for a partner on the basis of...

Why do some men father children outside of marriage but not provide support? Why are single women willing to have children outside of marriage when they receive little or no support from unmarried fathers? To answer these questions, we develop and estimate a dynamic equilibrium model of...

Why do some men father children outside of marriage but not provide support? Why are some single women willing to have children outside of marriage when they receive little or no support from unmarried fathers? Why is this behavior especially common among blacks? To shed light on these...