Policy changes in the United States in the 1990s resulted in sizable increases in employment rates of single mothers. We show that this increase led to a large and abrupt increase in work experience for single mothers with young children. We then examine the economic return to this increase in...

This paper studies the impacts of IRS EITC correspondence (mail) audits on taxpayer behaviors. The analysis documents widespread disallowance of EITC benefits due to nonresponse and insufficient response. Relative to similar nonaudited taxpayers, audited taxpayers over the years after being...

This paper exploits a combination of policy variation from multiple pension reforms in Austria and administrative data from the Austrian Social Security Database. Using the policy changes for identification, we estimate social security wealth and accrual elasticities in individuals’...

There is increasing evidence that tax credits for college do not affect college enrollment. This may be because prospective students do not know about tax benefits for credits or because the design of tax credits is not conducive to affecting educational outcomes. We focus on changing the...

This paper presents new empirical evidence on intertemporal labor supply elasticities. We use administrative data on the census of private sector employees in Austria and variation from mandated discontinuous changes in retirement benefits from the Austrian pension system. We first present...

Macroeconomic calibrations imply much larger labor supply elasticities than microeconometric studies. One prominent explanation for this divergence is that indivisible labor generates extensive margin responses that are not captured in micro studies of hours choices. We evaluate whether existing...

This paper presents new empirical evidence on the effects of retirement benefits on labor force participation decisions. We use administrative data on the census of private sector employees in Austria and variation from mandated discontinuous changes in retirement benefits from the Austrian...

This paper presents new evidence on the effects of retirement benefits on labor force participation decisions. The analysis is based on a mandated rule for employer-provided retirement benefits in Austria that creates discontinuities in the incentives for workers to delay retirement. We present...

We estimate causal effects of cash-on-hand on college enrollment decisions of students from low-income families. Using population-level, administrative data from United States income tax returns, we exploit variation in tax refunds received in the spring of the high school senior year. The...

Each year, the United States Internal Revenue Service identifies taxpayers who may have erroneously claimed Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) benefits and audits them through a mail correspondence process to verify their claims. This paper exploits the random variation arising from certain aspects...