Wealth, Marriage, and Sex Selection

By Girija Borker, Jan Eeckhout, Nancy Luke, Shantidani Minz, Kaivan Munshi, and Soumya Swaminathan

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

Two mechanisms have been proposed to explain sex selection in India: son preference, in which parents desire a male heir, and daughter aversion, in which dowry payments make parents worse off with girls. Our model incorporates both mechanisms, providing m...

Cassatts in the Attic: Is There a Gender Gap in the Commercialization of Science?

By Marlène Koffi and Matt Marx

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

We analyze nearly 70 million scientific articles to estimate the gender dynamics in the commercialization of science. We report a gender gap of 14 percent, which does not appear to be explained either by the quality of the science or by its commercial pot...

Land Concentration and Long-Run Development in the Frontier United States

By Cory Smith

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

I study the long-run economic effects of land concentration on the American frontier. Using quasi-random variation in initial land allocations from a checkerboard formula, I analyze a large database of property assessments and find that historical concent...

Age at School Entry and Human Capital Development: Evidence from Lesotho

By Jan-Walter De Neve, Ramaele Moshoeshoe, and Jacob Bor

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

Evidence on school-entry age impacts in lower-income countries is limited. We assess how school starting age affects human capital development in Lesotho, exploiting an enrollment age threshold. Children who start primary school at older ages overcome ini...

The Long-Term Impacts of Mixing the Rich and Poor: Evidence from Conscript Dorms

By Elias Einiö

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

To what extent is economic success determined by with whom individuals interact socially? We tackle this question by exploiting a large-scale natural experiment in the Finnish conscription. Our research design is based on the alphabetization of dorms, whi...

Ethnic Diversity, Historical Economic Exchange, and Development: Evidence from Andean Peru

By Miriam Artiles

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

Is ethnic diversity good or bad for economic development? Most studies find corrosive effects. This paper shows that historical exposure to economic exchange can mitigate these effects in the long run. I collect data from a natural experiment of Peru's co...

Real-World Effectiveness of the Influenza Vaccine in Young Children

By Michael L. Anderson, Carlos Dobkin, Devon Gorry, and Hung-Fu Tseng

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

Influenza causes substantial illness among children. RCTs demonstrate that the influenza vaccine reduces active-surveillance-detected influenza but have insufficient samples to examine outcomes such as health care provider visits. This study documents tha...

The Impact of Dating Apps on Young Adults: Evidence from Tinder

By Berkeren Büyükeren, Alexey Makarin, and Heyu Xiong

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

Online dating apps have transformed the dating market, yet their broader effects remain unclear. We study Tinder's impact on college students using its initial marketing focus on Greek organizations for identification. We show that the full-scale launch o...

Release, Detain, or Surveil? The Effect of Electronic Monitoring on Defendant Outcomes

By Roman Rivera

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

This paper studies the effect of pretrial electronic monitoring (EM) relative to both pretrial release and pretrial detention (jail). EM often involves a defendant wearing an electronic bracelet, which aims to reduce pretrial misconduct at a low cost. Usi...

Information Frictions and Employee Sorting between Start-Ups

By Kevin A. Bryan, Mitchell Hoffman, and Amir Sariri

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

Would workers apply to better firms if they were more informed about firm quality? Collaborating with 26 science-based start-ups, we create a custom job board and invite business school alumni to apply. The job board randomizes across applicants to show c...

Editors

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Current editors and editorial staff of the AEJ: Applied Economics.

Editors

[Page]

Current editors and editorial staff of the AEJ: Macroeconomics.

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2026

Macro Recruiting Intensity from Micro Data

By Simon Mongey and Giovanni L. Violante

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2026

We merge QCEW and JOLTS microdata to study firm recruiting intensity across establishments and over time. We show that large heterogeneity in vacancy-filling rates is fully accounted for by differences in gross hiring rates. We develop a theory consistent...

You're the One That I Want! Understanding the Overrepresentation of Women in the Public Sector

By Pedro Gomes and Zoë Kuehn

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2026

The public sector hires disproportionally more women than men. Using microdata, we document gender differences in employment, transition probabilities, hours, and wages in the public and private sector. We calibrate a search and matching model where men a...

Misallocation in Indian Agriculture

By Marijn Bolhuis, Swapnika Rachapalli, and Diego Restuccia

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2026

We exploit substantial variation in land-market institutions across Indian states and detailed household-level panel data to assess the effect of land-market distortions on agricultural productivity. We develop a model of heterogeneous farms and distorted...

Large Firms, Consumer Heterogeneity, and the Profit Share

By Robert C. Feenstra, Luca Macedoni, and Mingzhi (Jimmy) Xu

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2026

We examine the relationship between large firms and the rising profit share in a model that features oligopolistic competition and consumer heterogeneity. Conditional on the sales distribution, consumer heterogeneity increases firm-level markups and the p...

Shocks and Exchange Rates in Small Open Economies

By Vito Cormun and Pierre De Leo

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2026

We separately identify domestic and external sources of exchange rate fluctuations in a large sample of small open economies (SOEs). We find that external shocks lead to large and predictable deviations from uncovered interest parity (UIP), while domestic...

Banking Networks and Economic Growth: From Idiosyncratic Shocks to Aggregate Fluctuations

By Shohini Kundu and Nishant Vats

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2026

This paper investigates the role of banking networks in the transmission of shocks across borders. Combining banking deregulation in the United States with state-level idiosyncratic demand shocks, we show that geographically diversified banks reallocate f...

Disagreement about Monetary Policy

By Karthik A. Sastry

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2026

This paper studies why central banks and markets hold different beliefs. I introduce a model that formalizes three mechanisms for disagreement: asymmetric information about fundamentals, different perceptions of the policy rule, and different confidence i...