quick job entry or long term human capital development the dynamic effects of alternative training schemes this study evaluates and compares the eectiveness of two alternative training schemes for the unemployed short job search oriented training and long human capital oriented training we investigate the impact dynamics of these pro grams considering both unemployment and employment duration our analysis uses a rich administrative longitudinal data set for germany where both programs were implemented at the same time our estimation strategy flexibly accounts for dy namic selection on observables and unobservables as well as heterogeneous treatment eects the results indicate that short term training schemes can be an eective tool to reduce unemployment in the long run in particular if participation occurs early during unemployment long term training schemes increase the average du ration of employment spells more strongly than short term training however they increase the expected unemployment duration if they are started early during un employment this negative short run impact of long term training is an important driver of its overall eectiveness

automation and labor force participation in advanced economies macro and micro evidence abstract technological advances raise productivity and growth but are also likely to reshape labor markets we examine the impact of automation on aggregate labor force participation rates and individuals attachment to the workforce in advanced economies cross country analysis which leverages the variation in the routinizability of occupations and occupational composition points to significant negative effects of automation on the participation rates of prime age men and women individual level analysis confirms that workers previously employed in routinizable occupations are more likely to drop out of the labor force encouragingly higher spending on active labor market programs and education are however associated with smaller negative effects of technological change on participation

long run effects of public sector sponsored training in west germany between 1991 and 1997 west germany spent on average about 3 6 bn euro per year on public sector sponsored training programmes for the unemployed we base our empirical analysis on a new administrative data base that plausibly allows for selectivity correction by microeconometric matching methods we identify the effects of different types of training programmes over a horizon of more than seven years using bias corrected weighted multiple neighbours matching we find that all programmes have negative effects in the short run and positive effects over a horizon of about four years however for substantive training programmes with duration of about two years gains in employment probabilities of more than 10 points appear to be sustainable but come at the price of large negative lock in effects

payday loans and credit cards new liquidity and credit scoring puzzles using a unique dataset matched at the individual level from two administrative sources we examine household choices between liabilities and assess the informational content of prime and subprime credit scores in the consumer credit market first more specifically we assess consumers effectiveness at prioritizing use of their lowest cost credit option we find that most borrowers from one payday lender who also have a credit card from a major credit card issuer have substantial credit card liquidity on the days they take out their payday loans this is costly because payday loans have annualized interest rates of at least several hundred percent though perhaps partly explained by the fact that borrowers have experienced substantial declines in credit card liquidity in the year leading up to the payday loan second we show that fico scores and teletrack scores have independent information and are specialized for the types of lending where they are used teletrack scores have eight times the predictive power for payday loan default as fico scores we also show that prime lenders should value information about their borrowers subprime activity taking out a payday loan predicts nearly a doubling in the probability of serious credit card delinquency over the next year this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

does public insurance crowd out private insurance the cost of expanding public sector health programs depends critically on the extent to which public eligibility will cover just the uninsured or will crowd out existing private insurance coverage we estimate the extent of crowd out arising from the expansions of medicaid to pregnant women and children over the 1987 1992 period we estimate that approximately 50 percent of the increase in medicaid coverage was associated with a reduction in private insurance coverage this occurred largely because employees took up employer based insurance less frequently there is also some evidence that employers contributed less for insurance and that workers dropped coverage of dependents

consumption smoothing and debtor protections abstract protections for defaulting debtors are a widely used form of consumption insurance this paper evaluates the costs and benefits of this insurance both inside and outside of bankruptcy first i show that consumption declines by 6 upon default revealing a potential role for greater debtor protections to smooth consumption second i use changes in states laws to estimate the impact of one type of debtor protection asset exemptions on repayment in default and interest rates while higher exemptions smooth consumption by reducing collection in default the interest rate cost is large relative to the benefits adapting a sufficient statistics formula from the literature the estimates imply that the cost of additional exemption protection exceeds what debtors are willing to pay

retrospectives the economics of leon hirsch keyserling the economics of leon h keyserling influenced the roosevelt era in terms of housing agriculture labor and antitrust legislation during the truman era discussed herein keyserling was influential as chair of the council of economic advisors stressing long term growth general and selective fiscal monetary and interest rate policies and the view that economic growth equity and welfare are tied together via a full employment goal thus he was a liberal keynesian and a pragmatist realizing that the keys to prosperity were consumption wages and investment profits

policy watch government analysis of the benefits and costs of regulation recently congress has shown a greater interest in assessing the economic impact of regulation this interest was driven in part by estimates that federal regulation costs several hundred billion dollars annually in 1996 congress required the director of the office of management and budget to provide estimates of the total annual benefits and costs of individual regulations this essay reviews the increasing use of economic analysis in regulatory decisionmaking critically assesses the first 0mb report and considers how the use of economic analysis can help inform regulatory decisionmaking it argues that policymakers need to address a growing body of evidence that casts doubt on the effectiveness and efficiency of much regulation

the effect of the affordable care act medicaid expansions on financial wellbeing we examine the effect of the medicaid expansions under the 2010 patient protection and affordable care act aca on consumer financial outcomes using data from a major credit reporting agency for a large national sample of adults we employ the synthetic control method to compare individuals living in states that expanded medicaid to those that did not we find that the medicaid expansions significantly reduced the number of unpaid bills and the amount of debt sent to third party collection agencies among those residing in zip codes with the highest share of low income uninsured individuals our estimates imply a reduction in collection balances of approximately 1 140 among those who gain medicaid coverage due to the aca our findings suggest that the aca medicaid expansions had important financial impacts beyond increasing health care use

bankruptcy as implicit health insurance this paper examines the implicit health insurance that households receive from the ability to declare bankruptcy exploiting multiple sources of variation in asset exemption law i show that uninsured households with a greater financial cost of bankruptcy make higher out of pocket medical payments conditional on the amount of care received in turn i find that households with greater wealth at risk are more likely to hold health insurance the implicit insurance from bankruptcy distorts the insurance coverage decision using a microsimulation model i calculate that the optimal pigovian penalties are three quarters as large as the average penalties under the affordable care act

personal bankruptcy and credit supply and demand this paper examines how personal bankruptcy and bankruptcy exemptions affect the supply and demand for credit while generous state level bankruptcy exemptions are probably viewed by most policy makers as benefiting less well off borrowers our results using data from the 1983 survey of consumer finances suggest that they increase the amount of credit held by high asset households and reduce the availability and amount of credit to low asset households conditioning on observable characteristics thus bankruptcy exemptions redistribute credit toward borrowers with high assets interest rates on automobile loans for low asset households also appear to be higher in high exemption states

paying for efficiency incentivising same day discharges in the english nhs we study a pay for efficiency scheme that encourages hospitals to admit and discharge patients on the same calendar day when clinically appropriate since 2010 hospitals in the english nhs are incentivised by a higher price for patients treated as same day discharge than for overnight stays despite the former being less costly we analyse administrative data for patients treated during 2006 2014 for 191 conditions for which same day discharge is clinically appropriate of which 32 are incentivised using difference in difference and synthetic control methods we find that the policy had generally a positive impact with a statistically significant effect in 14 out of the 32 conditions the median elasticity is 0 24 for planned and 0 01 for emergency conditions condition specific design features explain some but not all of the differential responses

life cycle effects of health risk abstract health status affects individuals labor supply asset accumulation and welfare through four main channels productivity medical expenditures time endowments and survival probabilities using a life cycle model calibrated to the u s for different education groups i evaluate the relative importance of each channel and quantify their interactions the productivity and time endowment channels dominate in importance and the risks implied by them contribute significantly to income inequality and precautionary savings health effects are larger for the non college than college educated and account to a large extent for the lower labor supply and higher reliance on government transfers of the non college group

the value of medicaid interpreting results from the oregon health insurance experiment we develop frameworks for welfare analysis of medicaid and apply them to the oregon health insurance experiment across different approaches we estimate low income uninsured adults willingness to

retraining for the unemployed and the quality of the job match in germany retraining is an important measure in active labour market policy providing unemployed individuals with extensive vocational training using administrative data we show that retrainin

health insurance and the demand for medical care evidence from a randomized experiment we estimate how cost sharing the portion of the bill the patient pays affects the demand for medical services the data come from a randomized experiment a catastrophic insurance plan reduces expenditures 31 percent relative to zero out of pocket price the price elasticity is approximately 0 2 we reject the hypothesis that less favorable coverage of outpatient services increases total expenditure for example by deterring preventive care or inducing hospitalization

an evaluation of the swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s we investigate the presence of short and long term effects from joining a swedish labor market program vis a vis more intense job search in open unemployment overall the impact of the program system is found to have been mixed joining a program has increased employment rates among participants a result robust to a misclassification problem in the data on the other hand it has also allowed participants to remain significantly longer on unemployment benefits and more generally in the unemployment system this being particularly the case for those entitled individuals entering a program around the time of their unemployment benefits exhaustion

losing public health insurance tenncare reform and personal financial distress abstract a primary goal of health insurance is smoothing the financial risk associated with health shocks we estimate the effect of exposure to health insurance reform on individual level financial well being utilizing a plausibly exogenous shock to health insurance status resulting from a sudden disenrollment from tennessee s medicaid program in 2005 we find that the reform resulted in a 2 78 point decline in credit risk score for an individual in the median county in tennessee this study is the first examining the impact of losing any form of public assistance on personal financial well being and our results inform ongoing discussions around medicaid reform

noncognitive abilities and financial distress evidence from a representative household panel this paper provides evidence of how noncognitive abilities affect financial distress in a representative panel of households we find that people in the bottom quintile of noncognitive abilities are 10 times more likely to experience financial distress than those in the top quintile we provide evidence that this relation largely arises from worse financial choices and lack of financial insight by low ability individuals and reflects differential exposure to income shocks only to a lesser degree we mitigate endogeneity concerns using an iv approach and an extensive set of controls implications for policy and finance research are discussed received september 24 2017 editorial decision september 26 2018 by editor stijn van nieuwerburgh authors have furnished an internet appendix which is available on the oxford university press web site next to the link to the final published paper online

the credit consequences of unpaid medical bills abstract this paper quantifies the costs of leaving medical bills unpaid and what these costs imply for the value of health insurance to beneficiaries we argue that a large fraction of unpaid medical bills is sent to third party collections and reported to credit bureaus with detrimental effects on patients credit outcomes combining a large panel of credit records with data on credit offers we find that the aca medicaid expansion reduced newly reported medical collections by 5 89 billion and led to better terms of credit we find that the financial benefits of medicaid at least double when including this indirect credit channel

health insurance and the consumer bankruptcy decision evidence from expansions of medicaid abstract anecdotal evidence and several observational studies suggest that out of pocket medical costs are pivotal in a large fraction of consumer bankruptcy decisions in this paper we assess the contribution of medical costs to household bankruptcy risk by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in publicly provided health insurance using cross state variation in medicaid expansions from 1992 to 2004 we find that a 10 percentage point increase in medicaid eligibility reduces personal bankruptcies by 8 with no evidence that business bankruptcies are similarly affected we interpret our findings with a model in which health insurance imperfectly substitutes for other forms of financial protection and we use the model to present simple calibration results which illustrate how our reduced form parameter estimate affects the optimal level of health insurance benefits we conclude with calculations which suggest that out of pocket medical costs are pivotal in roughly 26 of personal bankruptcies among low income households

the oregon health insurance experiment evidence from the first year in 2008 a group of uninsured low income adults in oregon was selected by lottery to be given the chance to apply for medicaid this lottery provides an opportunity to gauge the effects of expanding access to public health insurance on the health care use financial strain and health of low income adults using a randomized controlled design in the year after random assignment the treatment group selected by the lottery was about 25 percentage points more likely to have insurance than the control group that was not selected we find that in this first year the treatment group had substantively and statistically significantly higher health care utilization including primary and preventive care as well as hospitalizations lower out of pocket medical expenditures and medical debt including fewer bills sent to collection and better self reported physical and mental health than the control group

alternative approaches to evaluation in empirical microeconomics four alternative but related approaches to empirical evaluation of policy interventions are studied social experiments natural experiments matching methods and instrumental variables in each case the necessary assumptions and the data requirements are considered for estimation of a number of key parameters of interest these key parameters include the average treatment effect the treatment on the treated and the local average treatment effect some issues of implementation and interpretation are discussed drawing on the labour market programme evaluation literature

the evolution of medical spending risk how has the economic risk of health spending changed over time for u s households we describe trends in aggregate health spending in the united states and how private insurance markets and public insurance programs have changed over time we then present evidence from consumer expenditure survey microdata on how the distribution of household spending on health that is out of pocket payments for medical care plus the household s share of health insurance premiums has changed over time this distribution has shifted up over time households spend more on medical care and insurance than they used to but for the purposes of measuring change in risk it is not the mean but the dispersion of this distribution that is of interest we consider two measures of dispersion that serve as proxies for household risk the standard deviation of the distribution of household health spending and the ratio of the 90th percentile of spending to the median the so called 90 50 gap we find surprisingly that neither has increased despite the rapid rise in aggregate health spending this conclusion holds true for broad subgroups of the population for example the nonelderly as a group but not for some narrowly defined subgroups for example low income families with children we next consider how much risk households should face from the perspective of economic efficiency household risk may not have changed much over the past several decades but do we have any evidence that this level represents either too much or too little risk finally we discuss implications for public policy in particular for current debates over expanding health insurance coverage to the uninsured

employment and earnings effects of awarding training vouchers in germany participation in intensive training programs for the unemployed in germany is allocated by awarding training vouchers using rich administrative data for all vouchers and actual program participation the authors provide first estimates of the short run and long run employment and earnings effects of receiving a training voucher award based on a selection on observables assumption the results imply that after the award voucher recipients experience long periods of lower labor market success compared to had they not received training vouchers small positive employment effects and no gains in earnings were observed four to seven years after the receipt of the voucher award in addition the findings suggest stronger positive effects both for all low skilled individuals who were awarded and redeemed a voucher and for low skilled and medium skilled individuals who chose to take degree courses than for higher skilled recipients

natural disasters growth and institutions a tale of two earthquakes abstract we examine the impact of natural disasters on gdp per capita by applying the synthetic control approach and using a within country perspective our analysis encompasses two large scale earthquakes that occurred in two different italian regions in 1976 and 1980 we show that the short term effects are negligible in both regions though they become negative if we simulate the gdp that would have been observed in absence of financial aid in the long term our findings indicate a positive effect in one case and a negative effect in the other largely reflecting divergent patterns of the tfp consistent with these findings we offer further evidence suggesting that a quake and related financial aid might either increase technical efficiency via a disruptive creation mechanism or reduce it by stimulating corruption distorting the markets and deteriorating social capital finally we show that the bad outcome is more likely to occur in regions with lower pre quake institutional quality as a result our evidence suggests that unanticipated local shocks are likely to change long run growth rates exacerbating territorial disparities

how do unemployment insurance benefits affect the decision to apply for social security disability insurance this paper examines whether unemployment insurance ui benefits affect the decision to apply for social security disability insurance di using data from the survey of income and benefits matched to administrative records on di applications i find that higher ui benefits reduce applications for di this substitution effect is imprecisely estimated but economically significant implying that a 1 00 increase in ui benefits reduces di expenditures by 15 cents recognizing this cost saving effect would increase the optimal ui benefit level by more than 20 percent for coefficients of relative risk aversion ranging from two to five

the household bankruptcy decision personal bankruptcy filings have risen from 0 3 percent of households per year in 1984 to around 1 35 percent in 1998 and 1999 transforming bankruptcy from a rare occurrence to a routine event lenders lost about 39 billion in 1998 due to personal bankruptcy filings but economists have little understanding of why households file for bankruptcy or why filings have increased so rapidly until very recently studying the household bankruptcy decision was very difficult because no household level data set existed that included information on bankruptcy filings in this paper we use new data from the panel study of income dynamics which includes information on bankruptcy filings to estimate a model of households bankruptcy decisions we find support for the strategic model of bankruptcy which predicts that households are more likely to file when their financial benefit from filing is higher our model predicts that an increase of 1 000 in households financial benefit from bankruptcy would result in a 7 percent increase in the number of bankruptcy filings our model also predicts that if the 1997 national bankruptcy review commission s proposed changes in bankruptcy exemption levels were implemented there would be a 16 percent increase in the number of bankruptcy filings each year but if the 100 000 cap on homestead exemptions recently passed by the u s senate were adopted our model predicts that there would be only a negligible effect on the number of filings we find little support for the nonstrategic model of bankruptcy which predicts that households file when adverse events occur which reduce their ability to repay finally controlling for state and time fixed effects our model shows that households are more likely to file for bankruptcy if they live in districts with higher aggregate filing rates

non cognitive abilities and financial delinquency the role of self efficacy in avoiding financial distress we investigate a novel determinant of financial distress namely individuals self efficacy or belief that their actions can influence the future individuals with high self efficacy are more likely to take precautions that mitigate adverse financial shocks they are subsequently less likely to default on their debt and bill payments especially after experiencing negative shocks such as job loss or illness thus noncognitive abilities are an important determinant of financial fragility and subjective expectations are an important factor in household financial decisions

migration consequences of welfare reform abstract we investigate whether recent changes in welfare policy affect the migration of low educated unmarried mothers estimates indicate that welfare reform is associated with an increase in employment related intrastate migration and a decrease in non employment related migration both within and between states the net effect was a small increase in intrastate migration and a small decrease in interstate migration the close link between migration and employment suggests that welfare reform has motivated low income women to move for economic reasons in general welfare policy appears to have a much larger effect on residential location because of its relationship to employment than because of benefit differences between states

what did medicare do the initial impact of medicare on mortality and out of pocket medical spending abstract we study the impact of the introduction of one of the major pillars of the social insurance system in the united states the introduction of medicare in 1965 our results suggest that in its first 10 years the establishment of universal health insurance for the elderly had no discernible impact on elderly mortality however we find a substantial reduction in the elderly s exposure to out of pocket medical expenditure risk specifically we estimate that the introduction of medicare was associated with a 40 decline in out of pocket spending for the top quartile of the out of pocket spending distribution a stylized expected utility framework suggests that the welfare gains from such reductions in risk exposure alone may be sufficient to cover almost two fifths of the costs of medicare these findings underscore the importance of considering the direct insurance benefits from public health insurance programs in addition to any indirect benefits from an effect on health

active labor market policy evaluations a meta analysis this article presents a meta analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labour market policies we categorise 199 programme impacts from 97 studies conducted between 1995 and 2007 job search assistance programmes yield relatively favourable programme impacts whereas public sector employment programmes are less effective training programmes are associated with positive medium term impacts although in the short term they often appear ineffective we also find that the outcome variable used to measure programme impact matters but neither the publication status of a study nor the use of a randomised design is related to the sign or significance of the programme estimate

the effectiveness of public sponsored training revisited the importance of data and methodological choices this article revisits the effectiveness of public sponsored training programs for germany accounting for dynamic selection into heterogeneous programs we carefully assess to what extent various aspects of our empirical strategy such as conditioning flexibly on employment and benefit histories the availability of rich data handling of later program participations and further methodological choices affect our estimates our results imply pronounced negative lock in effects in the short run and positive medium run effects on employment and earnings when job seekers enroll after having been unemployed for some time we find that data and specification issues can have a large effect

the effect of child health insurance access on schooling evidence from public insurance expansions although a sizable literature analyzes the effects of public health insurance programs on short run health outcomes little prior work has examined their long term effects we examine the effects of public insurance expansions among children in the 1980s and 1990s on their future educational attainment we find that expanding health insurance coverage for low income children increases the rate of high school and college completion these estimates are robust to only using federal medicaid expansions and mostly are due to expansions that occur when the children are not newborns our results indicate that the long run benefits of public health insurance are substantial

do differences in presidential economic advisers matter using data on members on the council of economic advisors as well as us treasury secretaries and omb directors from 1952 through 2005 i investigate the effect of economic advisors educational and employment backgrounds on the time series performance of several policy variables ivy league advisors appear to raise non defense government spending although the size of the impact differs by president while voter preferences appear to matter for a wider variety of policy variables changes in federal regulation and marginal tax rates the share of ivy league advisors is at least as important as voter preferences in explaining non defense spending

labour market effects of retraining for the unemployed the role of occupations abstractwe analyse the impact of retraining for unemployed low skilled job seekers in germany this extensive training programme leads to a formal vocational degree which is often required to access certain professions applying statistical matching methods we find that on average after a period with large lock in effects retraining strongly increases the employment probability of participants especially women we add to the literature by estimating the employment effects for different occupations for which participants are trained our results show that there are substantial differences depending on the occupation as the composition of trained occupations differs for men and women segregation could be a driver of higher employment effects for women however comparisons of men and women trained for the same occupations reveal that even after controlling for segregation women profit more from retraining while caseworkers are instructed to choose professions with high labour demand other aspects

the impact of active labour market programmes on the duration of unemployment in switzerland this article evaluates the effects of swiss active labour market programmes on the job chances of unemployed workers the main innovation is a comparison of two important dynamic evaluation estimators the matching estimator and the timing of events estimator we find that both estimators generate different treatment effects according to the matching estimator temporary subsidised jobs shorten unemployment duration whereas training programmes and employment programmes do not in contrast the timing of events estimator suggests that none of the swiss active labour market programmes shortens unemployment duration the aim of the present article is to study the impact of active labour market policies almps on the duration of unemployment in switzerland the new swiss almps reflect the increasing consensus among policy makers that actively assisting the unemployed in job search is preferable to simply providing them with passive income support the danger is so the argument goes that reliance on passive income support may reduce work incentives and job search activities and therefore increase the risk of long term unemployment almps are seen by many as the key to minimise these risks the question how participation in almp measures affects labour market histories of individuals has been the subject of substantial debate the main problem is that labour market outcomes for participants may be systematically different from non participants

the effect of health insurance on home payment delinquency evidence from aca marketplace subsidies abstract we use administrative tax data and survey responses to quantify the effect of subsidized health insurance on rent and mortgage delinquency we employ a regression discontinuity rd design exploiting the income threshold for receiving marketplace subsidies in states that did not expand medicaid under the affordable care act among households targeted by the policy eligibility for subsidies is associated with a roughly 25 decline in the delinquency rate and reduced exposure to out of pocket medical expenditure risk iv treatment effects are significant indicating that the decline in the delinquency rate is related to participation in health insurance we show that under plausible assumptions the social benefits implied by our rd estimates in terms of fewer evictions and foreclosures are substantial

a successful accident recollections and speculations about the cea as originally conceived the president s council of economic advisers would have a unique relation with the president using keynesian analysis to advise him on maintaining full employment after fifty years the council has evolved into being a useful cog in a large decision making apparatus dealing with the whole range of federal problems of economic policy and bringing to bear whatever economics has to say the initial keynesian predisposition has faded the council has participated in some mistakes but it has made a valuable contribution primarily by persistent representation of the value of the free market

a general formula for the optimal level of social insurance in an influential paper baily 1978 showed that the optimal level of unemployment insurance ui in a stylized static model depends on only three parameters risk aversion the consumption smoothing benefit of ui and the elasticity of unemployment durations with respect to the benefit rate this paper examines the key economic assumptions under which these parameters determine the optimal level of social insurance i show that a baily type expression with an adjustment for precautionary saving motives holds in a general class of dynamic models subject to weak regularity conditions for example the simple reduced form formula derived here applies with arbitrary borrowing constraints durable consumption goods private insurance arrangements and search and leisure benefits of unemployment

the political economy of property exemption laws abstract exemption laws enable people who default on loans to protect certain assets from liquidation every state has its own set of exemption laws and they vary widely the 1978 federal bankruptcy law contains a set of national exemptions which debtors in bankruptcy are permitted to use instead of their state s exemptions unless the state has formally opted out of the federal system we contend that states decisions to opt out shed light on their exemption levels we find that states are more likely to opt out if their state exemption is lower than the federal exemption and that states are more likely to opt out if they also have a high bankruptcy filing rate and transfer little money to the poor these latter findings suggest that studies that examine the impact of exemptions on for example the bankruptcy rate should not treat exemption levels as exogenous variables

the effects of welfare to work program activities on labor market outcomes studies examining welfare to work program effectiveness present mixed and sometimes discrepant findings partly due to research design data and methodological limitations using administrative data on missouri and north carolina welfare recipients we substantially improve on past estimation approaches to identify the distinct effects of each state s welfare to work subprograms assessment job search assistance and job readiness training and more intensive programs designed to augment human capital more intensive training is associated with greater initial earnings losses but also greater long run earnings gains the negative program impacts we observe in quarters immediately following participation turn positive by the second year after participation