Using a dynamic equilibrium model of housing tenure choice with fully specified markets for homeownership and rental properties, and endogenous house prices and rents, this paper studies the effect of fundamentals on equilibrium house prices and rents. Lower interest rates, relaxed lending standards, and higher incomes are shown to account for approximately one-half of the increase in the U.S. ...

Increasing access to education may have consequences that go beyond the effects on marginal students induced to enroll. It may change school quality, peer effects, and returns to skill. This paper studies the effects of an educational expansion on student learning, exploiting an Italian reform that changed the admission requirements for university STEM majors. Newly collected administrative dat...

The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003 introduces means-testing of premiums and benefits in two ways. It will means-test the Part B premium, setting higher premiums for better-off seniors. More importantly, it will offer much more generous drug benefits, at low or zero premiums, to lower-income beneficiaries. This paper argues that additional means-test...

Medical school tuition and medical student debt have increased dramatically during the past two decades, but loans are available on favorable terms, which makes it possible for students without personal or family means to get a medical education. As an investment, medical education is an excellent choice; its net present value is more than a million dollars. Cost is nevertheless a strong deterr...

More important, perhaps, the Commission has ignored many of the issues set out in the terms of reference The report can be summarised very simply it believes that social welfare payments are too low and that taxes should be increased on public servants, the self-employed including farmers, and those with incomes over £14,700 per annum to pay for these increases It finds virtually nothing wrong ...

Contrary to the popular view that the U.S. welfare system has been in a contractionary phase after the expansions of the welfare state in the 1960s, welfare spending resumed steady growth after a pause in the 1970s. However, although aggregate spending is higher than ever, there have been redistributions away from non-elderly and nondisabled families to families with older adults and to familie...

About 43 percent of nursing home costs are paid by Medicaid for the poor and for those who spend-down assets to qualify for Medicaid. We estimate the costs and distributional impacts of changes in the Medicaid asset test and the effect on the number of people spending down to Medicaid eligibility levels. Increasing asset thresholds from $2,00 to $12,000 would cost less than $4 billion, reduce s...

This paper combines “emerging twin peaks” distribution dynamics for percapita incomes across countries, with personal income distributions within countries over time. The result is a picture of worldwide income distribution dynamics across people. The paper finds that for determining world inequalities, the forces assuming first-order importance are those macroeconomic ones that determine cross...