We explore how teachers unions affect education production by comparing outcomes between districts allocating new tax revenue amidst collective bargaining negotiations and districts allocating tax revenue well before. Districts facing union pressure …
This paper explores the role of social interactions on a youth’s decision to begin smoking. Specifically, we estimate the effect of cigarette taxes during early childhood on beginning smoking later in adolescence in a discrete-time hazard model. These taxes do not directly affect children but may change the prevalence of smoking among parents, older relatives, or other adults. We find that a $0.25 cigarette tax increase during childhood decreases smoking initiation by 12.
In this paper, we provide new evidence on the distribution of claims in the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program across employers and industries. We also relate SSDI claims to employer and employee wage premiums and discuss implications for measures of inequality. Our research makes use of the universe of individual tax returns for the period 2000-2018, which allows to develop measures of the incidence of SSDI claims for all U.