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Working Paper
Small business and computers: adoption and performance
Until recently, little evidence suggested that the computer revolution of recent decades has had much impact on aggregate economic growth. Analysis at the worker level has found evidence that use of computers is associated with higher wages. Although some research questions whether this finding is solely due to unobserved heterogeneity in worker quality, others point to such results as evidence that the wage premia for skilled workers have increased over time. Adoption of new technologies is associated with higher productivity and higher productivity growth. As in the worker literature, firms ...
Working Paper
The state of the safety net in the post-welfare reform era
The passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill led to sweeping changes to the central U.S. cash safety net program for families with children. Importantly, along with other changes, the reform imposed lifetime time limits for receipt of welfare de facto ending the entitlement nature of cash welfare for poor families with children in the United States. Despite dire predictions about poverty and deprivation, the previous research shows that caseloads declined and employment increased, with no detectible increase in poverty or worsening of child-well-being. We re-evaluate these results in light of ...
Working Paper
The impact of welfare reform on marriage and divorce
The goal of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was to end the dependency of needy parents on government benefits, in part by promoting marriage; the pre-reform welfare system was widely believed to discourage marriage because it primarily provided benefits to single mothers. However, welfare reform may have actually decreased the incentives to be married by giving women greater financial independence via the program's new emphasis on work. This paper uses Vital Statistics data on marriages and divorces during 1989-2000 to examine the role of ...
Working Paper
The effect of Medicaid eligibility expansions on births
In an effort to increase the use of prenatal care by pregnant women and the utilization of medical care by children, eligibility for Medicaid was expanded dramatically for pregnant women and children during the 1980s and early 1990s. By lowering the costs of prenatal care, delivery, and child health care for some individuals, Medicaid expansions may prompt some women to give birth who otherwise would not have children or lead some women to have more children than they otherwise would have. This study uses natality data from 1983 to 1996 to examine the relationship between a state's ...
Journal Article
Financial services used by small businesses: evidence from the 1998 survey of small business finances
Using newly available data from the 1998 Survey of Small Business Finances, this article offers preliminary findings regarding the characteristics of small businesses in the United States and their use of credit and other financial services. The main goals of the survey are to provide information on credit accessibility for small businesses, their use of financial services, and the sources of those services. The survey also provides a general-purpose database that can be used to study small business financing. Preliminary findings suggest that although the financial landscape has changed ...