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January 24, 2025

The Targeting of Place-Based Policies: The New Markets Tax Credit Versus Opportunity Zones

Abstract For a place-based policy to succeed, it must target the right areas—typically those with lower economic development and resident well-being. The U.S. has two major place-based tax policies: the…

January 8, 2025

Menu Adjustment in Response to the Minimum Wage: A Return to the New Jersey-Pennsylvania Border

Abstract This paper studies how output prices are affected by increases in the minimum wage. To the best of our knowledge, we provide the first examination of how the prices…

December 4, 2024

Shifting Patterns of Social Interaction: Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through A.I.

Abstract We analyze changes in pedestrian behavior over a 30-year period in four urban public spaces located in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Building on William Whyte’s observational work from…

December 2, 2024

Why Has Construction Productivity Stagnated? The Role of Land-Use Regulation

Abstract We document a Kuznets curve for construction productivity in 20th-century America. Homes built per construction worker remained stagnant between 1900 and 1940, boomed after World War II, and then…

November 19, 2024

Low-Rise Multifamily and Housing Supply: A Case Study of Seattle

Abstract We provide an in-depth case study of land use reforms in Seattle to highlight how redevelopment of aging single-family housing to townhomes can lead to a significant increase in…

November 7, 2024

Introducing the “More Accurate Consumer Price Index”

Abstract Particularly since the 1990s, federal statistical agencies have worked to improve the ability of various price indexes to measure changes in the cost of living. However, in recent years,…

October 22, 2024

Poverty, Hardship, and Government Transfers

Abstract We examine how the well-being of those with few resources changed, amidst economic disruption and large, transitory government transfers. We find that in the years leading up to the…

August 29, 2024

The Distribution of Social Capital across Individuals and its Relationship to Income

Abstract There have been several attempts to measure social capital—the value inhering in relationships—at an aggregate level, but researchers lack comprehensive individual-level social capital measures. Using a combination of direct…

June 10, 2024

Employment and Labor Supply Responses to the Child Tax Credit Expansion: Theory and Evidence

Abstract The 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion increased government benefits to families, and especially to families with the lowest incomes. Economic theory predicts that this policy intervention would have…

May 16, 2024

Critiquing Bastian (2022, 2023, 2024, and forthcoming):On Child Tax Credit Reform and the Sensitivity of Single Mothers to Work Incentives

Abstract In 2021, Congress passed and President Biden signed a major, but temporary, reform to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Among other reforms to the credit, the American Rescue Plan…