Working Papers

Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges
(with David J. Deming and John Friedman), NBER Working Paper No. 31492 (July 2023)

The Surrogate Index: Combining Short-Term Proxies to Estimate Long-Term Treatment Effects More Rapidly and Precisely
(with Susan Athey, Guido W. Imbens and Hyunseung Kang), NBER Working Paper No. 26463 (November 2019)

The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility
(with John Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, and Sonya R. Porter), NBER Working Paper No. 25147 (September 2018)

Published Papers

Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice
(with Peter Bergman, Stefanie DeLuca, Nathaniel Hendren, Lawrence F. Katz, and Christopher Palmer), Forthcoming, American Economic Review

The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data
(with John Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Michael Stepner, and the Opportunity Insights Team), Forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics

Social Capital II: Determinants of Economic Connectedness
(with Matthew O. Jackson, Theresa Kuchler, Johannes Stroebel et al), Nature, 608 (7921): 122-134, 2022.

Social Capital I: Measurement and Associations with Economic Mobility
(with Matthew O. Jackson, Theresa Kuchler, Johannes Stroebel et al), Nature, 608 (7921): 108-121, 2022.

Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States (previously titled “Mobility Report Cards”)
(with John N. Friedman, Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner, and Danny Yagan), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135(3): 1567–1633, 2020.

Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective
(with Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, and Sonya R. Porter), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135(2): 711-783, 2020.

Do Tax Cuts Produce More Einsteins? The Impacts of Financial Incentives vs. Exposure to Innovation on the Supply of Inventors
(with Alex Bell, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, and John van Reenen), Journal of the European Economic Association 17(3), 2019

A Practical Method to Reduce Privacy Loss When Disclosing Statistics Based on Small Samples
(with John Friedman), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 109 : 414-420, 2019.

Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation
(with Alex Bell, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, and John Van Reenen), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(2): 647-713, 2019.

The Effects of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility II: County Level Estimates
(with Nathaniel Hendren), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3): 1163-1228, 2018.

The Effects of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility I: Childhood Exposure Effects
(with Nathaniel Hendren), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3): 1107-1162, 2018.

The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940
(with David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert Manduca, Jimmy Narang), Science 356 (6336): 398-406, 2017

The Effect of Housing on Portfolio Choice
(with Laszlo Sandor and Adam Szeidl), Journal of Finance 72(3): 1171-1212, 2017

Measuring the Impact of Teachers: Reply to Rothstein
(with John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff), American Economic Review 107(6): 1685-1717, 2017

The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014
with Michael Stepner, Sarah Abraham, Shelby Lin, Benjamin Scuderi, Nicholas Turner, Augustin Bergeron and David Cutler)The Journal of the American Medical Association 315(16): 1750-1766, 2016

The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment
(with Nathaniel Hendren and Lawrence Katz), American Economic Review 106(4): 855-902, 2016.

Using Lagged Outcomes to Evaluate Bias in Value-Added Models
(with John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 106(5): 393-99, 2016.

Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood
(with Nathaniel Hendren, Frina Lin, Jeremy Majerovitz and Benjamin Scuderi), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 106(5): 282-88, 2016.

Consumption Commitments and Habit Formation
(with Adam Szeidl), Econometrica 84(2): 855-890, 2016.

Identification and Inference with Many Invalid Instruments
(with Michal Kolesar, John Friedman, Edward Glaeser, and Guido Imbens), Journal of Business Economics and Statistics 33(4): 474-484, 2015.

Behavioral Economics and Public Policy: A Pragmatic Perspective
Ely Lecture, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 105(5): 1-33, 2015.

Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States
(with Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez), Quarterly Journal of Economics 129(4): 1553-1623, 2014.

Measuring the Impact of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood
(with John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff), American Economic Review 104(9): 2633-2679, 2014.

Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates
(with John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff), American Economic Review 104(9): 2593-2632, 2014.

Active vs. Passive Decisions and Crowd-out in Retirement Savings Accounts: Evidence from Denmark
(with John Friedman, Soren Leth-Petersen, Torben Nielsen, and Tore Olsen), Quarterly Journal of Economics 129(3): 1141-1219, 2014.

What Policies Increase Prosocial Behavior? An Experiment with Referees at the Journal of Public Economics
(with Emmanuel Saez and Laszlo Sandor), Journal of Economic Perspectives 28(3): 169-88, 2014.

Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility
(with Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, Emmanuel Saez, and Nick Turner), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 104(5): 141-147, 2014.

Using Differences in Knowledge Across Neighborhoods to Uncover the Impacts of the EITC on Earnings
(with John Friedman and Emmanuel Saez), American Economic Review 103(7): 2683-2721, 2013.

Social Insurance: Connecting Theory to Data
(with Amy Finkelstein), Handbook of Public Economics Volume 5: 111-193, 2013.

Does Indivisible Labor Explain the Difference Between Micro and Macro Elasticities? A Meta-Analysis of Extensive Margin Elasticities
(with Adam Guren, Day Manoli, and Andrea Weber), NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2012, Volume 27: 1-56, 2013.

Teaching the Tax Code: Earnings Responses to an Experiment with EITC Recipients
(with Emmanuel Saez), American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 5(1): 1-31, 2013

Bounds on Elasticities with Optimization Frictions: A Synthesis of Micro and Macro Evidence on Labor Supply
Econometrica 80(3): 969-1018, 2012.

How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project STAR
(with John Friedman, Nathaniel Hilger, Emmanuel Saez, Diane Schanzenbach, and Danny Yagan), Quarterly Journal of Economics 126(4): 1593-1660, 2011

Are Micro and Macro Labor Supply Elasticities Consistent? A Review of Evidence on the Intensive and Extensive Margins
(with Adam Guren, Day Manoli, and Andrea Weber), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 101: 471-75, 2011.

Adjustment Costs, Firm Responses, and Micro vs. Macro Labor Supply Elasticities: Evidence from Danish Tax Records
(with John Friedman, Tore Olsen, and Luigi Pistaferri), Quarterly Journal of Economics 126(2): 749-804, 2011.

Expanding Access to Administrative Data for Research in the United States
(with David Card, Martin Feldstein, and Emmanuel Saez) National Science Foundation White Paper, September 2010.

Dividend and Corporate Taxation in an Agency Model of the Firm
(with Emmanuel Saez), American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2(3): 1-31, 2010.

Optimal Taxation and Social Insurance with Endogenous Private Insurance
(with Emmanuel Saez), American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2(2): 85-114, 2010.

Is the Taxable Income Elasticity Sufficient to Calculate Deadweight Loss? The Implications of Evasion and Avoidance
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 1(2): 31-52, 2009.

Sufficient Statistics for Welfare Analysis: A Bridge Between Structural and Reduced-Form Methods
Annual Review of Economics 1: 451-488, 2009

Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence
(with Adam Looney and Kory Kroft), American Economic Review 99(4): 1145-1177, Sep. 2009.

Moral Hazard vs. Liquidity and Optimal Unemployment Insurance
Journal of Political Economy 116(2): 173-234, 2008.

Cash-on-Hand and Competing Models of Intertemporal Behavior: New Evidence from the Labor Market
(with David Card and Andrea Weber), Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(4): 1511-1560, 2007.

Interest Rates, Irreversibility, and Backward-Bending Investment
Review of Economic Studies 74(1): 67-91, 2007.

Consumption Commitments and Risk Preferences
(with Adam Szeidl), Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(2): 831-877, 2007.

The Spike at Benefit Exhaustion: Leaving the Unemployment System or Starting a New Job?
(with David Card and Andrea Weber), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 97:113-118, 2007.

The Effects of Taxes on Market Responses to Dividend Announcements and Payments: What Can We Learn from the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut?
(with Joseph Rosenberg and Emmanuel Saez), in eds. A. Auerbach, J. Hines, and J. Slemrod, Taxing Corporate Income in the 21st Century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1-33, 2007.

Income Risk and the Benefits of Social Insurance: Evidence from Indonesia and the United States
(with Adam Looney), in eds. T. Ito and A. Rose, Fiscal Policy and Management in East Asia: NBER East Asia Seminar on Economics 16, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007.

A General Formula for the Optimal Level of Social Insurance
Journal of Public Economics 90: 1879-1901, 2006.

Consumption Smoothing and the Welfare Consequences of Social Insurance in Developing Economies
(with Adam Looney), Journal of Public Economics 90: 2351-2356, 2006.

The Effects of the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut on Corporate Behavior: Interpreting the Evidence
(with Emmanuel Saez), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 96: 124-129, 2006.

A New Method of Estimating Risk Aversion
American Economic Review 96(5), 1821-1834, December 2006.

Dividend Taxes and Corporate Behavior: Evidence from the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut
(with Emmanuel Saez), Quarterly Journal of Economics 120(3): 791-833, 2005

Unpublished Manuscripts

Time Trends in the Use of Administrative Data for Empirical Research
NBER Summer Institute, July 2012.

Salience and Taxation: Evidence and Policy Implications
Testimony for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, March 2011.

The Simple Economics of Salience and Taxation
NBER Working Paper No. 15246, August 2009.

Optimal Unemployment Insurance When Income Effects are Large
NBER Working Paper No. 10500, May 2004.

Consumption Commitments, Unemployment Durations, and Local Risk Aversion
NBER Working Paper No. 10211, December 2003.

When do Countercyclical Policies Increase Economic Stability?
September 2001.

Working Papers

Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges
(with David J. Deming and John Friedman), NBER Working Paper No. 31492 (July 2023)

The Surrogate Index: Combining Short-Term Proxies to Estimate Long-Term Treatment Effects More Rapidly and Precisely
(with Susan Athey, Guido W. Imbens and Hyunseung Kang), NBER Working Paper No. 26463 (November 2019)

The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility
(with John Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, and Sonya R. Porter), NBER Working Paper No. 25147 (September 2018)

Published Papers

Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice
(with Peter Bergman, Stefanie DeLuca, Nathaniel Hendren, Lawrence F. Katz, and Christopher Palmer), Forthcoming, American Economic Review

The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data
(with John Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Michael Stepner, and the Opportunity Insights Team), Forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics

Social Capital II: Determinants of Economic Connectedness
(with Matthew O. Jackson, Theresa Kuchler, Johannes Stroebel et al), Nature, 608 (7921): 122-134, 2022.

Social Capital I: Measurement and Associations with Economic Mobility
(with Matthew O. Jackson, Theresa Kuchler, Johannes Stroebel et al), Nature, 608 (7921): 108-121, 2022.

Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States (previously titled “Mobility Report Cards”)
(with John N. Friedman, Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner, and Danny Yagan), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135(3): 1567–1633, 2020.

Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective
(with Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, and Sonya R. Porter), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135(2): 711-783, 2020.

Do Tax Cuts Produce More Einsteins? The Impacts of Financial Incentives vs. Exposure to Innovation on the Supply of Inventors
(with Alex Bell, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, and John van Reenen), Journal of the European Economic Association 17(3), 2019

A Practical Method to Reduce Privacy Loss When Disclosing Statistics Based on Small Samples
(with John Friedman), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 109 : 414-420, 2019.

Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation
(with Alex Bell, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, and John Van Reenen), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(2): 647-713, 2019.

The Effects of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility II: County Level Estimates
(with Nathaniel Hendren), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3): 1163-1228, 2018.

The Effects of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility I: Childhood Exposure Effects
(with Nathaniel Hendren), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3): 1107-1162, 2018.

The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940
(with David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert Manduca, Jimmy Narang), Science 356 (6336): 398-406, 2017

The Effect of Housing on Portfolio Choice
(with Laszlo Sandor and Adam Szeidl), Journal of Finance 72(3): 1171-1212, 2017

Measuring the Impact of Teachers: Reply to Rothstein
(with John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff), American Economic Review 107(6): 1685-1717, 2017

The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014
with Michael Stepner, Sarah Abraham, Shelby Lin, Benjamin Scuderi, Nicholas Turner, Augustin Bergeron and David Cutler)The Journal of the American Medical Association 315(16): 1750-1766, 2016

The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment
(with Nathaniel Hendren and Lawrence Katz), American Economic Review 106(4): 855-902, 2016.

Using Lagged Outcomes to Evaluate Bias in Value-Added Models
(with John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 106(5): 393-99, 2016.

Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood
(with Nathaniel Hendren, Frina Lin, Jeremy Majerovitz and Benjamin Scuderi), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 106(5): 282-88, 2016.

Consumption Commitments and Habit Formation
(with Adam Szeidl), Econometrica 84(2): 855-890, 2016.

Identification and Inference with Many Invalid Instruments
(with Michal Kolesar, John Friedman, Edward Glaeser, and Guido Imbens), Journal of Business Economics and Statistics 33(4): 474-484, 2015.

Behavioral Economics and Public Policy: A Pragmatic Perspective
Ely Lecture, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 105(5): 1-33, 2015.

Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States
(with Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez), Quarterly Journal of Economics 129(4): 1553-1623, 2014.

Measuring the Impact of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood
(with John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff), American Economic Review 104(9): 2633-2679, 2014.

Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates
(with John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff), American Economic Review 104(9): 2593-2632, 2014.

Active vs. Passive Decisions and Crowd-out in Retirement Savings Accounts: Evidence from Denmark
(with John Friedman, Soren Leth-Petersen, Torben Nielsen, and Tore Olsen), Quarterly Journal of Economics 129(3): 1141-1219, 2014.

What Policies Increase Prosocial Behavior? An Experiment with Referees at the Journal of Public Economics
(with Emmanuel Saez and Laszlo Sandor), Journal of Economic Perspectives 28(3): 169-88, 2014.

Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility
(with Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, Emmanuel Saez, and Nick Turner), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 104(5): 141-147, 2014.

Using Differences in Knowledge Across Neighborhoods to Uncover the Impacts of the EITC on Earnings
(with John Friedman and Emmanuel Saez), American Economic Review 103(7): 2683-2721, 2013.

Social Insurance: Connecting Theory to Data
(with Amy Finkelstein), Handbook of Public Economics Volume 5: 111-193, 2013.

Does Indivisible Labor Explain the Difference Between Micro and Macro Elasticities? A Meta-Analysis of Extensive Margin Elasticities
(with Adam Guren, Day Manoli, and Andrea Weber), NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2012, Volume 27: 1-56, 2013.

Teaching the Tax Code: Earnings Responses to an Experiment with EITC Recipients
(with Emmanuel Saez), American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 5(1): 1-31, 2013

Bounds on Elasticities with Optimization Frictions: A Synthesis of Micro and Macro Evidence on Labor Supply
Econometrica 80(3): 969-1018, 2012.

How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project STAR
(with John Friedman, Nathaniel Hilger, Emmanuel Saez, Diane Schanzenbach, and Danny Yagan), Quarterly Journal of Economics 126(4): 1593-1660, 2011

Are Micro and Macro Labor Supply Elasticities Consistent? A Review of Evidence on the Intensive and Extensive Margins
(with Adam Guren, Day Manoli, and Andrea Weber), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 101: 471-75, 2011.

Adjustment Costs, Firm Responses, and Micro vs. Macro Labor Supply Elasticities: Evidence from Danish Tax Records
(with John Friedman, Tore Olsen, and Luigi Pistaferri), Quarterly Journal of Economics 126(2): 749-804, 2011.

Expanding Access to Administrative Data for Research in the United States
(with David Card, Martin Feldstein, and Emmanuel Saez) National Science Foundation White Paper, September 2010.

Dividend and Corporate Taxation in an Agency Model of the Firm
(with Emmanuel Saez), American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2(3): 1-31, 2010.

Optimal Taxation and Social Insurance with Endogenous Private Insurance
(with Emmanuel Saez), American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2(2): 85-114, 2010.

Is the Taxable Income Elasticity Sufficient to Calculate Deadweight Loss? The Implications of Evasion and Avoidance
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 1(2): 31-52, 2009.

Sufficient Statistics for Welfare Analysis: A Bridge Between Structural and Reduced-Form Methods
Annual Review of Economics 1: 451-488, 2009

Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence
(with Adam Looney and Kory Kroft), American Economic Review 99(4): 1145-1177, Sep. 2009.

Moral Hazard vs. Liquidity and Optimal Unemployment Insurance
Journal of Political Economy 116(2): 173-234, 2008.

Cash-on-Hand and Competing Models of Intertemporal Behavior: New Evidence from the Labor Market
(with David Card and Andrea Weber), Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(4): 1511-1560, 2007.

Interest Rates, Irreversibility, and Backward-Bending Investment
Review of Economic Studies 74(1): 67-91, 2007.

Consumption Commitments and Risk Preferences
(with Adam Szeidl), Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(2): 831-877, 2007.

The Spike at Benefit Exhaustion: Leaving the Unemployment System or Starting a New Job?
(with David Card and Andrea Weber), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 97:113-118, 2007.

The Effects of Taxes on Market Responses to Dividend Announcements and Payments: What Can We Learn from the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut?
(with Joseph Rosenberg and Emmanuel Saez), in eds. A. Auerbach, J. Hines, and J. Slemrod, Taxing Corporate Income in the 21st Century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1-33, 2007.

Income Risk and the Benefits of Social Insurance: Evidence from Indonesia and the United States
(with Adam Looney), in eds. T. Ito and A. Rose, Fiscal Policy and Management in East Asia: NBER East Asia Seminar on Economics 16, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007.

A General Formula for the Optimal Level of Social Insurance
Journal of Public Economics 90: 1879-1901, 2006.

Consumption Smoothing and the Welfare Consequences of Social Insurance in Developing Economies
(with Adam Looney), Journal of Public Economics 90: 2351-2356, 2006.

The Effects of the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut on Corporate Behavior: Interpreting the Evidence
(with Emmanuel Saez), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 96: 124-129, 2006.

A New Method of Estimating Risk Aversion
American Economic Review 96(5), 1821-1834, December 2006.

Dividend Taxes and Corporate Behavior: Evidence from the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut
(with Emmanuel Saez), Quarterly Journal of Economics 120(3): 791-833, 2005

Unpublished Manuscripts

Time Trends in the Use of Administrative Data for Empirical Research
NBER Summer Institute, July 2012.

Salience and Taxation: Evidence and Policy Implications
Testimony for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, March 2011.

The Simple Economics of Salience and Taxation
NBER Working Paper No. 15246, August 2009.

Optimal Unemployment Insurance When Income Effects are Large
NBER Working Paper No. 10500, May 2004.

Consumption Commitments, Unemployment Durations, and Local Risk Aversion
NBER Working Paper No. 10211, December 2003.

When do Countercyclical Policies Increase Economic Stability?
September 2001.