Figuring out what works

[Research Highlight]

June 04, 2020

Healthy people follow health trends. That behavior can actually cloud research.

Health Recommendations and Selection in Health Behaviors

By Emily Oster

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2020

Consider a case in which a new research finding links a health behavior with good health outcomes. A possible consequence is take-up of this behavior among individuals who engage in other positive health behaviors. If this occurs, later analyses of observ...

The Economist as Plumber

By Esther Duflo

American Economic Review, May 2017

As economists increasingly help governments design new policies and regulations, they take on an added responsibility to engage with the details of policy making and, in doing so, to adopt the mindset of a plumber. Plumbers try to predict as well as possi...

Breaking the poverty cycle

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Can a support program for disadvantaged high school students have lasting effects?

Clean hands and dirty jobs

[Research Highlight]

June 16, 2020

How much do politicians’ relatives get special treatment on the job market?

Politics in the Family: Nepotism and the Hiring Decisions of Italian Firms

By Stefano Gagliarducci and Marco Manacorda

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2020

This paper studies the effect of family connections to politicians on individuals' labor market outcomes. Using data for Italy spanning more than three decades on a sample of almost one million individuals plus data on the universe of individuals holding ...

The enduring effect of communism

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East Germany hasn’t caught up with the rest of the country. Why?

Rethinking racial discrimination

[Research Highlight]

June 19, 2020

Harvard professor Mario Small discusses how sociology can help economics diversify its perspective.

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2020

Sticky Expectations and Consumption Dynamics

By Christopher D. Carroll, Edmund Crawley, Jiri Slacalek, Kiichi Tokuoka, and Matthew N. White

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2020

To match aggregate consumption dynamics, macroeconomic models must generate "excess smoothness" in consumption expenditures. But microfounded models are calibrated to match micro data, which exhibit no "excess smoothness." So standard microfounded models ...