A principal agent model in an entrepreneurial settingis developed and tested using Federal Reserve Board data on entrepreneurialeffort and wealth in privately held firms. The implications of agency theoryare tested based on three questions: (1) What determines the entrepreneur'sequity share? (2)...

We examine the effects of state health insurance mandates requiring coverage of screening mammograms. We find robust evidence that mammography mandates significantly increased mammography screenings by 4.5-25 percent. Effects are larger for women with less than a high school degree in states...

Estimates of teacher “value-added” suggest teachers vary substantially in their ability to promote student learning. Prompted by this finding, many states and school districts have adopted value-added measures as indicators of teacher job performance. In this paper, we conduct a new test of...

We augment the standard principal-agent model to accommodate an entrepreneurial setting, where effort, ownership, and firm size are determined endogenously. We test the model's predictions (some novel) using new data on entrepreneurial effort and wealth. Accounting for unobserved firm...

It is well documented that individuals do not spend SNAP benefits smoothly over the month after receipt. Rather, recipients spend a disproportionate share of benefits at the beginning of the benefit month. This has costs for recipients and stores. There is also evidence that other income...

Much research has studied the health effects of expanding insurance coverage to low-income people, but there is less work on the direct provision of care to the uninsured. We study the two largest federal programs aimed at reducing breast and cervical cancer among uninsured women in the US: one...