Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs: Introduction

This volume and an accompanying volume contain revised versions of papers presented at a conference at the offices of the National Bureau of Economic Research on December 4-5, 2014. The Editor would like to thank NBER President James Poterba for inspiration for this project and would to thank two anonymous reviewers for the University of Chicago Press for their comments improving the papers in the volumes. The chapters were also significantly improved by the comments and suggestions of the discussants at the conference, David Autor, David Blau, Dan Black, Richard Blundell, Amy Finkelstein, Lawrence Katz, and Jeffrey Liebman. Eugene Steuerle gave an insightful evening address at the conference as well. Thanks also go to Carl Beck and Denis Healy for logistical and local arrangements for the conference and to Helena Fitz-Patrick for shepherding the papers through the review and publication process. Finally, the Editor would like to thank the authors of the chapters for their long hours of hard work on their chapters. Any success of these volumes is to be entirely credited to them. Financial support was graciously provided by the Smith-Richardson Foundation for the project. The Editor also wishes to acknowledge support from the Russell Sage Foundation for work related to the project and to state that he has no other material or financial relationships relating to this research. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.