More than Shelter: The Effect of Rental Eviction Moratoria on Household Well-Being

By Xudong An, Stuart A. Gabriel, and Nitzan Tzur-Ilan

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2022

We investigate the impact of the 2020 COVID-19 rental eviction moratoria on household well-being. Analysis of new panel data indicates that eviction moratoria reduced evictions and resulted in redirection of scarce household financial resources to immedia...

Agri-food Value Chain Revolutions in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

By Christopher B. Barrett, Thomas Reardon, Johan Swinnen, and David Zilberman

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2022

Agri-food value chains (AVCs) intermediate the flow of products between largely rural farmers, fisherfolk, or herders and increasingly urban consumers. The theoretical models that historically structured research on the economic development process assu...

Electronic Food Vouchers: Evidence from an At-Scale Experiment in Indonesia

By Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, Benjamin A. Olken, Elan Satriawan, and Sudarno Sumarto

American Economic Review, February 2023

We compare how in-kind food assistance and an electronic voucher-based program affect the delivery of aid in practice. The Government of Indonesia randomized across 105 districts the transition from in-kind rice to approximately equivalent electronic vouc...

Health Effects of Increasing Income for the Elderly: Evidence from a Chilean Pension Program

By Enrico Miglino, Nicolás Navarrete H., Gonzalo Navarrete H., and Pablo Navarrete H.

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2023

We estimate the effect of a permanent income increase on the health outcomes of the elderly poor. Our regression discontinuity design exploits an eligibility cutoff in a Chilean basic pension program that grants monthly payments to retirees without a cont...

Employed in a SNAP? The Impact of Work Requirements on Program Participation and Labor Supply

By Colin Gray, Adam Leive, Elena Prager, Kelsey Pukelis, and Mary Zaki

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2023

Work requirements are common in US safety net programs. Evidence remains limited, however, on the extent to which work requirements increase economic self-sufficiency or screen out vulnerable individuals. Using linked administrative data on food stamps (S...

Falling wages and discretionary pay-setting practices

[Research Highlight]

February 06, 2023

A decline in the use of standardized pay rates contributed to stagnating wages from the 1970s to the mid-1990s.

Retrospectives: Edgar Sydenstricker: Household Equivalence Scales and the Causes of Pellagra

By Philip Clarke and Guido Erreygers

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2023

In the early part of the 20th century the disease pellagra, now almost unknown, affected and killed thousands of people in the United States. Some claimed it was an infection, while others maintained it was due to a dietary deficiency. The economist Edg...

Timely Business Dynamics Using Google Places

By Thibaut Duprey, Daniel E. Rigobon, Artur Kotlicki, and Philip Schnattinger

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We introduce a new real-time method to measure business opening and closure rates by relying on Google Places, the data behind the Google Maps platform. We collect data on establishments of customer-facing industries (food, retail, accommodation) and prov...

Measuring Business Trends and Outlook through a New Survey

By Catherine Buffington, Lucia Foster, and Colin Shevlin

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

The Census Bureau's new Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) provides timely information from businesses on their current trends and expectations over core concepts such as prices, employment, and revenue. The BTOS collects qualitative information in...

The Effects of the Monthly and Lump-Sum Child Tax Credit Payments on Food and Housing Hardship

By Zachary Parolin, Elizabeth Ananat, Sophie Collyer, Megan Curran, and Christopher Wimer

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We investigate the effects of the expanded 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) on material hardship among households with children over April 2021–May 2022, using the Census Household Pulse Survey and difference-in-difference analyses of household types with di...

Gendered Disparities during the COVID-19 Crisis in Sierra Leone

By Madison Levine, Niccolò F. Meriggi, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Vasudha Ramakrishna, Maarten Voors, and Uday Wadehra

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

The COVID-19 outbreak had severe adverse impacts on the health and wealth of households in lower-income countries (LICs), and has affected even more severely female-headed households in LICs. Using high-frequency phone surveys in Sierra Leone, we show tha...

Asset-Based Microfinance for Microenterprises: Evidence from Pakistan

By Faisal Bari ⓡ Kashif Malik ⓡ Muhammad Meki ⓡ Simon Quinn

American Economic Review, February 2024

We run a field experiment offering graduated microcredit clients the opportunity to finance a business asset worth four times their usual borrowing limit. We implement this using a hire-purchase contract; our control group is offered a zero interest loan ...

Expanding markets

[Research Highlight]

January 24, 2024

What happens to incumbents when more sellers are added to online platforms?

Go Vegan? Prejudice, (Blind) Experimentation, and Food Choices

By Michèle Belot and Adelson Teh

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

We examine the role of prejudice and experimentation in the evaluation of a nonmainstream product. We conduct a randomized controlled experiment where participants evaluate a plant-based product. We vary (i) whether they can taste the product, (ii) whethe...

The Fading Treatment Effects of a Multifaceted Asset-Transfer Program in Ethiopia

By Nathan Barker, Dean Karlan, Christopher Udry, and Kelsey Wright

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2024

We study the long-run effects of a big-push "graduation" program in Ethiopia in which very poor households received a one-time transfer of productive assets (mainly livestock), technical training, and access to savings accounts. After seven years, treatme...

In-Kind Transfers as Insurance

By Lucie Gadenne, Samuel Norris, Monica Singhal, and Sandip Sukhtankar

American Economic Review, September 2024

Households in developing countries often face variation in the prices of consumption goods. We develop a model demonstrating that in-kind transfers will provide insurance benefits against price risk if the covariance between the marginal utility of income...

Agricultural productivity and chronic disease

[Research Highlight]

October 17, 2024

Sheetal Sekhri discusses the impact of the Green Revolution on long-term health outcomes in India.

Changes in Nutrient Intake at Retirement

By Melvin Stephens Jr. and Desmond Toohey

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2025

Prior research finds food expenditure decreases at retirement, which suggests households are inadequately saving. In contrast, other evidence shows that direct measures of food intake are unaffected by exiting the labor force. Using a wide array of data s...

Did Welfare Reform End the Safety Net as We Knew It? The Record since 1996

[Symposium: US Safety Net]

By Lucie Schmidt, Lara Shore-Sheppard, and Tara Watson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2025

This paper examines the evolution of the safety net for low-income families since welfare reform in 1996 promised to "end welfare as we know it". The total package of supports has become substantially more generous, but has changed in character. Support h...

Social Welfare Portability and Migration: Evidence from India’s Public Distribution System

By Travis Baseler, Ambar Narayan, Odyssia Ng, and Sutirtha Sinha Roy

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

This paper studies a new program designed to make food entitlements portable throughout India. We first characterize the state of food entitlement portability using mystery shoppers and surveys of migrants and distributors. We then inform households abo...