In what is probably the largest cash transfer program in the world today China’s Dibao program aims to fill all poverty gaps. In theory, the program creates a poverty trap, with 100% benefit withdrawal rate (BWR). But is that what we see in practice? The paper proposes an econometric method of...

Existing research has focused on why and when firms may choose to access the external technology market. Surprisingly, however, less is known about the reliability of the patents attached to these external technologies in the face of litigation. “Weak” external patents expose a firm to the...

A fundamental question in economics is whether happiness increases pari passu with improvements in material conditions or whether humans grow accustomed to better conditions over time. We rely on a large-scale experiment to examine what kind of impact the provision of housing to extremely poor...

In recent articles, I have argued that integrated assessment models (IAMs) have flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis. IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision that is illusory, and can fool policy-makers into thinking that...

We analyze the joint dynamics of religious beliefs, scientific progress and coalitional politics along both religious and economic lines. History offers many examples of the recurring tensions between science and organized religion, but as part of the paper's motivating evidence we also uncover...

Tax-qualified retirement plans seek to promote saving for retirement, yet most employers permit pre- retirement access by letting 401(k) participants borrow plan assets. This paper examines who borrows and why, and who defaults on their loans. Our administrative dataset tracks several hundred...

Standard Medicare Part D drug insurance provides limited coverage in a ``donut hole'' region, making the purchase problem dynamic. We develop a discontinuity-based test for myopia using enrollees who arrived near the coverage gap early in the year. We find that there are fewer and cheaper...

We present a model that characterizes the relationship between optimal dynamic cash management and the choice of the means of payment. The novel feature of the model is the sequential nature of the payments choice: in each instant the agent can choose to pay with either cash or credit. This...

We review both the theoretical and empirical literature on entrepreneurship and financial frictions, with an emphasis on the heterogeneous and dynamic micro-level implications of financial frictions for macro development.

In the wake of a severe recession and a sluggish recovery, labor market slack cannot be gauged solely in terms of the conventional measure of the unemployment rate (that is, the number of individuals who are not working at all and actively searching for a job). Rather, assessments of the...