This paper examines the theoretical difficulties inherent in basing social investment decisions solely on considerations involving the additional tax payments and tax receipts the investment generates. Although the conceptual issues raised are quite general and could be applied to a wide variety of government financed investments, emphasis is on…

The model deals with channels through which income transfer programs are likely to affect working hours of family members and a method of estimating the labor-supply reactions to income maintenance programs. Labor-supply effects are functions of the duration of a family's participation and the relevant importance of male market investment.…

A review is presented of Richard Freeman's "The Overeducated American," a book that proposes that the U.S. has entered an era in which the college degree cannot be assumed to be a safe avenue to economic success. Focus here is on five of the book's seven main conclusions. Freeman's evidence documenting the new depression for…

The standard one-period labor supply model that economists have used is in some ways an inadequate tool to evaluate a Family Assistance Plan (FAP). The principal difficulty is that an FAP will have important interperiod or life cycle effects. The pure life cycle model, an extension of the work of Becker and Ghez, is derived here without reference…