Discrimination Expectations in the Credit Market: Survey Evidence from India

By Stefano Fiorin, Joseph Hall, and Martin Kanz

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We present results from a representative survey and an information experiment to provide evidence on discrimination expectations. We find that discrimination based on gender, caste, and religion is perceived to be widespread in society overall and in the ...

Head Start Access: No Evidence of Changes to Lifetime Fertility

By Esra Kose, Siobhan O'Keefe, and Maria Rosales-Rueda

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

This study investigates the effect of early childhood access to the Head Start program on long-term fertility outcomes. Using a difference-in-difference methodology, we exploit the staggered rollout of Head Start from 1966 to 1980 across US counties for w...

Explaining Variation in Child SSI Receipt: The Role of Medical CDRs

By Jeffrey Hemmeter, Michael Levere, and David Wittenburg

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

The administrative processes that govern the delivery of social safety net benefits have important implications for beneficiaries. We use variation in the occurrence of medical continuing disability reviews (CDRs) to explain trends of children receiving S...

What Is the Value of the Child and Dependent Care Credit?

By Gabrielle Pepin

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

The Child and Dependent Care Credit (CDCC) subsidizes child care costs for working families. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 increased the CDCC's generosity during 2021 only. I find that while the CDCC is of rela...

Does Old-Age Social Security Help Children? The Impact of Social Security on Grandchild Resources

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

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

Though Social Security is typically considered a program to support retirees, nearly one in ten children live in a home reporting Social Security income, twice as many as traditional cash welfare. We use the sharp increase in eligibility for Social Securi...

Economic Measurement Lost in a Random Forest? A Case Study of Employment Data

By Abe Dunn, Eric English, Kyle Hood, Lowell Mason, and Brian Quistorff

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

Big data and machine learning (ML) offer transformative potential for economic measurement. This study evaluates the use of alternative employment data from a payroll processor to improve on timely measures of regional employment estimates, comparing ML m...

From Online Job Postings to Economic Insights: A Machine Learning Approach to Structuring Naturally Occurring Data

By Tatjana Dahlhaus, Reinhard Ellwanger, Gabriela Galassi, and Pierre-Yves Yanni

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

This paper develops a matched vacancy-company dataset by combining daily Canadian online job postings with smartphone-derived visits to points of interest. To address inconsistencies in company names, we enhance natural language processing algorithms for ...

Nowcasting Distributional National Accounts for the United States: A Machine Learning Approach

By Gary Cornwall and Marina Gindelsky

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

Inequality statistics are usually calculated from high-quality microdata, typically available with a one-to-two-year lag. In turbulent times, policymakers and data users need timely estimates. We use an elastic net to nowcast the overall Gini coefficient ...

The Role of Representational and Computational Complexity in Belief Formation

By Cuimin Ba, J. Aislinn Bohren, and Alex Imas

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We examine how representational and computational complexity interact to influence belief updating. Building on the two-stage belief updating model of Ba, Bohren, and Imas (2024), we show that when no salience cues are present, attentional and processing ...

Extracting Statistical Relationships from Observational Data: Predicting with Full or Partial Information

By Guillaume R. Fréchette, Emanuel Vespa, and Sevgi Yuksel

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

Decision-makers sometimes rely on past data to learn statistical relationships between variables. However, when predicting a target variable, they must adjust how they aggregate past information depending on the observables available. If agents have infor...

Real and Assumed Information

By Ned Augenblick, Matthew Backus, Andrew T. Little, and Don A. Moore

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We consider a simplified version of the model in Augenblick et. al (2025), in which people use models to translate data into beliefs and predictions. We posit that they make correct inferences given a model but not unconditionally, forgetting model uncert...

Energy Hogs and Energy Angels: What Does Residential Electricity Use Really Tell Us about Profligate Consumption?

By Severin Borenstein

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

High residential volumetric electricity prices are partially justified as placing more of the cost burden on less prudent households, so-called "energy hogs." I show that the difference in means between above-median and below-median household consumption ...

Restructuring the Rate Base

By Steve Cicala

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

While electricity market restructuring appears to have lowered generation costs, it does not seem to have benefitted consumers. Where did the savings go? This paper evaluates whether the downstream T&D utilities that remained rate regulated capitalize...

HANK: A New Core of Usable Macroeconomics

By Adrien Auclert

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

I argue that heterogeneous agent New Keynesian (HANK) models are a natural contender to define a new core of usable macroeconomics, replacing the IS-LM/Mundell-Fleming paradigm prevailing after the 1960s and the New Keynesian paradigm prevailing after the...

Practical Stabilization Policy in the Twenty-First Century

By Martin Eichenbaum

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

In 1997, the American Economic Association convened a panel to address whether a core of usable macroeconomics exists. The consensus about monetary policy has not changed since then. However, in a sharp reversal, there is now widespread consensus that fis...

The Evolving Core of Usable Macroeconomics for Policymakers

By Jonas Fisher, Bart Hobijn, and Alessandro T. Villa

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

Macroeconomic models and policymakers' language have evolved significantly. Today's policy discussions center on New Keynesian (NK) synthesis, which builds on the neoclassical growth model and the AS-AD framework. It incorporates nominal and real rigiditi...

Heterogeneous Agent Models

By Ayşe İmrohoroğlu

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

Heterogeneous agent models have become central to modern macroeconomic research, often replacing the representative agent framework. However, what is core for these frameworks is the use of microfoundations that involve optimizing behavior. The strength o...

Economics in the Age of Algorithms

By Sendhil Mullainathan

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

The rise of algorithms, particularly machine learning, does more than impact the economy. These tools offer new empirical methods. They enable new kinds of interventions. And foundational theories must be changed to account for them. Economics is, at its ...

Root Causes of the Racial Wealth Gap: A Critique of the Fed View

By William A. Darity Jr. and Stephan Lefebvre

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We address the Federal Reserve's model for Black–White wealth inequality. The Fed view has it that the Black–White wealth gap, when measured with an "expanded wealth concept," is smaller than previously thought and primarily explained by income differ...

Labor Market Shocks and Immigration Enforcement

By Sergio Barrera, Brianna Felegi, and Sarina Heron

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We study the effects of labor market shocks on immigration enforcement by evaluating the impact of the Great Recession on the likelihood that commuting zones partner with immigration authorities through 287(g) agreements and early adoption of Secure Commu...