Social Media, News Consumption, and Polarization: Evidence from a Field Experiment

By Ro'ee Levy

American Economic Review, March 2021

Does the consumption of ideologically congruent news on social media exacerbate polarization? I estimate the effects of social media news exposure by conducting a large field experiment randomly offering participants subscriptions to conservative or lib...

"Soft" Affirmative Action and Minority Recruitment

By Daniel Fershtman and Alessandro Pavan

American Economic Review: Insights, March 2021

We study search, evaluation, and selection of candidates of unknown quality for a position. We examine the effects of "soft" affirmative action policies increasing the relative percentage of minority candidates in the candidate pool. We show that, while m...

Bringing financial markets together

[Research Highlight]

March 03, 2021

Securities are typically traded separately from one another. Would it be better to combine those transactions?

Connecting Disconnected Financial Markets?

By Milena Wittwer

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, February 2021

In most financial markets, securities are traded in isolation. Such a disconnected market design can be inefficient if agents trade more than one security. I assess welfare effects of connecting markets by allowing orders for one security to depend on pri...

Spending now or saving for later

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How do lump-sum severance payments affect consumption for laid-off workers?

Open access

[Research Highlight]

September 17, 2020

Is there a way that companies can use consumer data while also respecting their privacy?

Beyond the lab

[Research Highlight]

February 16, 2021

Do experiments with student participants produce valid measures of behavior within the general population?

How much do local leaders matter?

[Research Highlight]

February 15, 2021

Christian Dippel discusses the Forty-Eighters and their role in the US antislavery movement.

Leadership in Social Movements: Evidence from the "Forty-Eighters" in the Civil War

By Christian Dippel and Stephan Heblich

American Economic Review, February 2021

This paper studies the role of leaders in the social movement against slavery that culminated in the US Civil War. Our analysis is organized around a natural experiment: leaders of the failed German revolution of 1848–1849 were expelled to the United St...

Call for Papers: NBU-NPB 2021 Annual Research Conference

[News]

February 10, 2021

The deadline for submission is 14 March 2021 (12 pm EET).

AEA Statement on Anti-Asian Violence and Discrimination

[News]

March 22, 2021

See statement by AEA leadership.

The top 10 percent through the ages

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How unequal were the Middle Ages compared to today?

CSMGEP Profile: Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato

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Deadly deadlines

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“Desk-clearing” by drug agencies has consequences for public safety.

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2021

The Power of Social Pensions: Evidence from China's New Rural Pension Scheme

By Wei Huang and Chuanchuan Zhang

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2021

This paper utilizes the county-by-county rollout of China's New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) and finds that, among age-eligible people, the pension scheme leads to higher household income and food expenditure, less farmwork, better health, and lower mortal...

Physician Practice Organization and Negotiated Prices: Evidence from State Law Changes

By Naomi Hausman and Kurt Lavetti

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2021

We study the relationship between physician organizational structures and prices negotiated with private insurers. Using variation caused by state-level judicial law changes, we show that a 10 percent increase in the enforceability of noncompete agreement...

Growing Markets through Business Training for Female Entrepreneurs: A Market-Level Randomized Experiment in Kenya

By David McKenzie and Susana Puerto

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2021

A common concern with efforts to directly help some small businesses to grow is that their growth comes at the expense of their unassisted competitors. We test this possibility using a two-stage randomized experiment in Kenya that randomizes business trai...

The Power of Example: Corruption Spurs Corruption

By Nicolás Ajzenman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2021

Does political corruption erode civic values and foster dishonest behavior? I test this hypothesis in the context of Mexico by combining data on local government corruption and cheating on school tests. I find that, following revelations of corruption by ...

Subways and Road Congestion

By Yizhen Gu, Chang Jiang, Junfu Zhang, and Ben Zou

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2021

We study whether subways alleviate road congestion by examining 45 subway line launches in China and by using detailed data on road speed. Our difference-in-differences estimation finds that in the first year after a subway line is launched, rush hour spe...