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Journal Article
Unemployment insurance fraud
Concealed Earnings fraud accounts for almost two-thirds of the total overpayments due to all fraud.
Journal Article
Multiple Jobholders
The most likely candidates to hold multiple jobs are not who you would expect.
Journal Article
Unemployment benefits: how much money goes unclaimed?
Not all who are eligible to receive unemployment benefits actually collect them.
Journal Article
Unemployment insurance: payments, overpayments and unclaimed benefits
In the U.S. unemployment insurance program, most of the overpayments due to fraud arise from individuals collecting benefits while they are gainfully employed. In addition, the overpayments are dwarfed by payments unclaimed by some who are eligible for unemployment benefits.
Journal Article
Who is concealing earnings and still collecting unemployment benefits?
Concealed earnings represent the largest source of fraud in the U.S. unemployment insurance system. Individuals with relatively low earnings constitute a larger fraction of those committing such fraud. High-earnings individuals, however, account for larger dollar amounts of this fraud.
Working Paper
Comparative Advantage and Moonlighting
We document three facts: (i) Higher educated workers are more likely to moonlight; (ii) conditional on education, workers with higher wages are less likely to moonlight; and (iii) the prevalence of moonlighting is declining over time for all education groups. We develop an equilibrium model of the labor market to explain these patterns. A dominating income effect explains the negative correlation of moonlighting with productivity in the cross section and the downward trend over time. A higher part-to-full time pay differential for skilled workers (a comparative advantage) explains the ...
Working Paper
Comparative Advantage and Moonlighting
The proportion of multiple jobholders (moonlighters) is negatively correlated with productivity (wages) in cross-sectional and time series data, but positively correlated with education. We develop a model of the labor market to understand these seemingly contradictory facts. An income e?ect explains the negative correlation with productivity while a comparative advantage of skilled workers explains the positive correlation with education. We provide empirical evidence of the comparative advantage in CPS data. We calibrate the model to 1994 data on multiple jobholdings, and assess its ability ...
Working Paper
Unemployment insurance fraud and optimal monitoring
The most prevalent incentive problem in the U.S. unemployment insurance system is that individuals collect unemployment benefits while being gainfully employed. We show how the unemployment insurance authority can efficiently use a combination of tax/subsidy and monitoring to prevent such fraud. The optimal policy monitors the unemployed at fixed intervals. Employment tax is nonmonotonic: it increases between verifications but decreases after a verification. Unemployment benefits are relatively flat between verifications but decrease sharply after a verification.
Working Paper
Parents, Patience, and Persistence: A Novel Theory of Intergenerational College Attainment
We present a theory of intergenerational persistence in college attainment (a Bachelor's degree, BD) guided by two well-documented empirical regularities: (i) patient individuals are more likely to be college graduates and (ii) patience persists across generations because parents choose to transmit it to their children, among other non-cognitive traits. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to formalize and evaluate these mechanisms in a general equilibrium model. In the model, (i) and (ii) are endogenous outcomes implying college persistence. "Standard mechanisms," i.e., credit ...
Working Paper
Parents, Patience, and Persistence: A Novel Theory of Intergenerational College Attainment
We present a theory of intergenerational persistence in college attainment (a Bachelors degree, BD) guided by two well-documented empirical regularities: (i) patient individuals are more likely to be college graduates and (ii) patience persists across generations because parents choose to transmit it to their children, among other non-cognitive traits. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to formalize and evaluate these mechanisms in a general equilibrium model. In the model, (i) and (ii) are endogenous outcomes implying college persistence. Standard mechanisms, i.e., credit ...