Can Massive Technological Progress Hurt Workers? A Review of Power and Progress by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson

By Fiona Scott Morton

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024

This book offers a radical thesis: Technological innovation often benefits elites while worsening conditions for workers, challenging the common view that technology always improves living standards. Through historical transitions like the Industrial Revo...

Universalism: Global Evidence

By Alexander W. Cappelen, Benjamin Enke, and Bertil Tungodden

American Economic Review, January 2025

This paper leverages nationally representative surveys across 60 countries and 64,000 respondents to present novel stylized facts about the relationship-specific nature of altruism. Across individuals, universalist preferences systematically vary with dem...

Organized Voters: Elections and Public Funding of Nonprofits

By Camille Urvoy

American Economic Review, January 2025

What makes politicians respond to civil society organizations' demands? I use new data on government transfers to French associations and exploit close elections to show that politicians grant more funds to ideologically close organizations when the local...

One Man, One Vote

By Romans Pancs and Tridib Sharma

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2025

In the United States, electoral districts must be equipopulous. This requirement is known as the one man, one vote doctrine. We propose welfare-based justifications for this requirement under the economic view, according to which voters care about the pol...

Commitment and Conflict in Unanimity Bargaining

By Topi Miettinen and Christoph Vanberg

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2025

We theoretically investigate how the application of unanimity rule can lead to inefficient delay in collective decision-making. We do so in the context of a distributive multilateral bargaining model featuring strategic precommitment. Prior to each bargai...

Political Social Learning: Short-Term Memory and Cycles of Polarization

By Gilat Levy and Ronny Razin

American Economic Review, February 2025

This paper investigates the effect of voters' short-term memory on political outcomes by considering politics as a collective learning process. We find that short-term memory may lead to cycles of polarization and consensus across parties' platforms. Foll...

Getting Infrastructure Built: The Law and Economics of Permitting

By Zachary Liscow

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2025

Given the benefits to economic growth and economic mobility, and the need to transition to green energy, getting infrastructure built is an urgent issue. I first review the evidence on the costs and benefits of the current regime of government approvals f...

Min(d)ing the President: A Text Analytic Approach to Measuring Tax News

By Lenard Lieb, Adam Jassem, Rui Jorge Almeida, Nalan Baştürk, and Stephan Smeekes

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2025

Economic agents react to signals about future tax policy changes. Consequently, estimating their macroeconomic effects requires identification of such signals. We propose a novel text analytic approach for transforming textual information into an economic...

Ideological Bias and Trust in Information Sources

By Matthew Gentzkow, Michael B. Wong, and Allen T. Zhang

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, May 2025

We study the role of endogenous trust in amplifying ideological bias. Agents in our model learn a sequence of states from sources whose accuracy is ex ante uncertain. Agents learn these accuracies by comparing their own reasoning about the states based on...

Persistent Protests

By Sofia Correa

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, May 2025

A continuum of citizens with heterogeneous opportunity costs participates in a protest with well-defined demands. As long as the government doesn't concede, it pays a cost increasing in time and participation. Citizens who are part of the victory team enj...

Free Trade and the Formation of Environmental Policy: Evidence from US Legislative Votes

By Jevan Cherniwchan and Nouri Najjar

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2025

We test the hypothesis that governments alter environmental policy in response to trade by studying NAFTA's effects on the formation of environmental policy in the US House of Representatives between 1990 and 2000. We find that reductions in US tariffs de...

Lessons for the United States from Pharmaceutical Regulation Abroad

[Symposium: Drug Pricing and Regulation]

By Margaret K. Kyle

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Pharmaceutical markets are characterized by barriers to entry and information problems. Many countries intervene in the pricing and reimbursement of drugs to a greater extent than the US government to date. Continued pressure from politicians and recent l...

Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime: Comment

By Justin McCrary

American Economic Review, September 2002

Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effects of Police on Crime: Reply

By Steven D. Levitt

American Economic Review, September 2002

The Swing Voter's Curse: Comment

By Mark Fey and Jaehoon Kim

American Economic Review, September 2002

Targeting Social Assistance: The Evolution of College Financial Aid in Colombia

By Juliana Londoño-Vélez, Catherine Rodríguez, Fabio Sánchez, and Luis Esteban Álvarez- Arango

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

College financial aid programs often target individuals based on a combination of academic merit and socioeconomic status. The design of these programs can also be influenced by social preferences and political factors. This paper analyzes the evolution o...

The Effectiveness of Local Conservation Ballots

By Dylan Hogan, Eyal G. Frank, Joséphine Gantois, and Anouch Missirian

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

Global action to slow biodiversity loss is critically needed but comes at substantial cost. In this article, we assess the effectiveness of local ballot measures for land-based conservation projects in the United States as a way to increase bird abundance...

Political Polarization and US-Mexico Migration

By María Esther Caballero, Giuseppe Ippedico, and Giovanni Peri

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We study how the US presidential election of 2016 affected the subsequent inflow of Mexican-born immigrants. We use the Matricula Consular de Alta Seguridad data to construct proxies for annual inflows and internal movements of Mexican-born individuals, i...

The Economic Impact of Discriminatory Policies: Insights from Same-Sex Marriage Bans

By Lei Gao, Steve Liu, and Ying Wang

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

This study examines the unintended economic costs, with significant fiscal implications, associated with discriminatory policies, focusing specifically on same-sex marriage bans in the United States. Drawing on a body of empirical studies, we show that th...

The Political Economy of Geoeconomic Power

By Christopher Clayton, Matteo Maggiori, and Jesse Schreger

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

Great powers are increasingly using their economic and financial strength for geopolitical aims. This rise of "geoeconomics" has the potential to reshape the international trade and financial system. This paper examines the role of domestic political econ...