The Value of Software

By Roberto Gómez-Cram and Alastair Lawrence

American Economic Review, October 2025

Software is one of the most important assets that needs to be priced in the digital economy. It has emerged as a disruptive technology, with companies primarily valued for their software offerings growing from 2 percent to 13 percent of market share betwe...

Monetary Policy and the Labor Market: A Quasi-experiment in Sweden

By John Coglianese, Maria Olsson, and Christina Patterson

American Economic Review, October 2025

We analyze a monetary quasi-experiment in Sweden from 2010–2011, when the Riksbank raised the interest rate substantially. We argue that this increase was beyond what labor market conditions warranted, driven instead by new concerns about financial stab...

Diffusion of Reproductive Health Behavior through International Migration: Effects on Origin-Country Fertility

By Susan Godlonton and Caroline Theoharides

American Economic Review, October 2025

International migrants may facilitate the transmission of ideas across countries. We examine the impact of migrant exposure to reproductive health policies on origin-country fertility in the Philippines. We exploit temporal variation in destination-countr...

Politics at Work

By Emanuele Colonnelli, Valdemar Pinho Neto, and Edoardo Teso

American Economic Review, October 2025

We study how individual political views shape firm behavior and labor market outcomes using new microdata from Brazil. We first show that business owners are considerably more likely to employ copartisan workers. This phenomenon is in part driven by the o...

Apart but Connected: Online Tutoring, Cognitive Outcomes, and Soft Skills

By Michela Carlana and Eliana La Ferrara

American Economic Review, October 2025

We study the Tutoring Online Program (TOP), where tutoring is entirely online and tutors are volunteer university students matched with underprivileged middle school students. We leverage random assignment to estimate effects during and after the pandemic...

The Dynamic Effects of Cash Transfers to Agricultural Households

By Shilpa Aggarwal, Jenny C. Aker, Dahyeon Jeong, Naresh Kumar, David Sungho Park, Jonathan Robinson, and Alan Spearot

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

Little is known about the evolution and persistence of the effects of one-time cash transfers, especially in rural agricultural settings with limited productive investment opportunities. We use bi-monthly phone surveys to estimate dynamic impacts for ca...

The Political Geography of Cities

By Richard Bluhm, Christian Lessmann, and Paul Schaudt

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

We study the link between regional capitals and urban development. We exploit new global data on hundreds of first-order administrative and capital city reforms from 1987 until 2018 to estimate the capital city premium. Gaining capital status increases...

Decentralizing Development: The Economic Impacts of Government Splits

By Ricardo Dahis and Christiane Szerman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

We examine the economic impacts of the creation of smaller government units through splitting. Exploiting reforms that led to sharp increases in the number of government units in Brazil, we show that voluntary splitting enlarges the public sector, enhance...

The Role of Race in the Legal Representation of Low-Income Defendants

By Maya Mikdash and Suhyeon Oh

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Little is known about the role of race in the defense of low income defendants by court-appointed attorneys. Exploiting the quasi-random assignment of court-appointed attorneys to cases, we test whether attorneys secure better deals for same-race defen...

ASSA 2026 Job Market Information

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Message from the AEA Ombuds Team at MWI

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October 02, 2025

View the AEA Member Announcement from October 2nd, 2025.

A Matter of Time? Measuring Effects of Public Schooling Expansions on Families

By Chloe R. Gibbs, Jocelyn Wikle, and Riley Wilson

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children— through duration expansions to the kindergarten day—to better understand how an implicit childcare subsidy affects mothers and families. Exploiting full-day k...

Last Chance to Apply or Nominate Someone for AEA Award and Grant Opportunities

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October 03, 2025

View the AEA Member Announcement from October 3rd, 2025.

2026 Elected AEA Officers

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Learn more about the new officers elected for 2026.

AEA Leadership

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Learn about AEA leadership including current and former officers

Career in Economics Video

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Una Carrera en Economía (Spanish Version)

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The Unintended Consequences of Academic Leniency

By A. Brooks Bowden, Viviana Rodriguez, and Zach Weingarten

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Education is widely recognized as the primary driver of human capital accumulation. However, policies designed to promote educational attainment often overlook students’ endogenous responses. This paper provides empirical evidence of the causal impact...

Fostering Cooperation: The Conflict-Reducing Effects of Inter-Village Competition for Government Transfers

By Teevrat Garg, Caterina Gennaioli, Stefania Lovo, and Gregor Singer

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

We examine the effect of inter-group competition on within-group violent conflict in Indonesia. Using a triple-differences design, we find that higher competition for national government transfers between villages reduces within-village conflict. These ...

Turbocharging Profits? Contract Gaming and Revenue Allocation in Healthcare

By Atul Gupta, Ambar La Forgia, and Adam Sacarny

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

Firms often exploit weaknesses in government contracts to boost revenues, yet little is known about how they allocate these funds. We study how hospitals allocated $3 billion obtained from gaming a Medicare loophole. The average gaming hospital increase...