Overview
Hamish Low is an economist at the University of Oxford and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). His research focuses on dynamic labor economics, disability insurance, and consumption over the life cycle. He is best known for the Low-Pistaferri (2015) life-cycle structural model of DI, which formalizes the insurance-incentive trade-off under permanent disability shocks, and for the survey article Low and Pistaferri (2020) synthesizing the empirical DI design literature.
Key Contributions / Features
- Low and Pistaferri (2015, AER): Structural life-cycle model (PSID, male heads HS or less, 1984–2008) identifying three health states (L=0/1/2); indirect inference estimation; Type I error 67% (under-45) and 37% (over-45) for severely disabled; application elasticity 2.22 for L=1, 0.018 for L=2; food stamps are substitute for L=1 (reduces false DI applications) and complement for L=2 (enables application); welfare increases with more generosity, looser screening, and more food stamps. See Low and Pistaferri 2015 — Disability Insurance and the Dynamics of the Incentive-Insurance Tradeoff.
- Low and Pistaferri (2019, NBER WP 26513): Empirical paper documenting a 21.5 pp gender gap in Type I errors (false rejections): women with severe, permanent, work-limiting impairments are more likely to be rejected at the vocational stage (RFC assessment), not the medical stage; SSA supply-side bias confirmed via disability vignettes and labor market outcomes.
- Low and Pistaferri (2020, Fiscal Studies): Survey article reframing the central DI policy question around type I errors (false rejections) as the dominant inefficiency; introduces five-dimensional policy taxonomy (medical test, application process, eligibility structure, generosity, reassessment).
- Ball and Low (2014, Economica): Early work showing self-insurance and DI are complementary rather than substitutable mechanisms for managing disability income risk.
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