Targeting poverty

[Research Highlight]

November 30, 2018

The AEA interviews Rema Hanna and Benjamin Olken about whether universal basic income programs are the best way to provide aid in the developing world.

2018 in Research Highlights

[Research Highlight]

November 27, 2018

Economists tackled gender issues, education, globalization, and more.

Labor Drops: Experimental Evidence on the Return to Additional Labor in Microenterprises

By Suresh de Mel, David McKenzie, and Christopher Woodruff

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2019

A field experiment in Sri Lanka provided wage subsidies to randomly chosen microenterprises to test whether hiring additional labor benefits such firms, and whether a short-term subsidy can have a lasting impact on firm employment. Using 12 rounds of surv...

Flexible(ish) working hours

[Research Highlight]

February 06, 2019

How does part-time work respond to economic swings?

Educational returns

[Research Highlight]

February 12, 2019

Are financial aid programs getting their money's worth?

Survey says?

[Research Highlight]

April 02, 2019

Inaccurate Census data has led researchers to underestimate the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs.

Connecting Africa to the digital fastlane

[Research Highlight]

March 27, 2019

How did high-speed, high-capacity Internet affect African businesses and workers?

Understanding "underemployment"

[Page]

A new paper explores the dynamics when college graduates take jobs for which they are overqualified.

A Well-Being Snapshot in a Changing World

By Daniel J. Benjamin, Kristen B. Cooper, Ori Heffetz, and Miles Kimball

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

Although technology-driven economic growth generates gains in consumption and employment opportunities, it may also negatively impact other dimensions of well-being, such as emotional well-being or sense of stability. We study 204 aspects of self-reported...

Turning to cartels

[Research Highlight]

June 03, 2019

When factories leave town, does violence get worse?

Disability Benefits, Consumption Insurance, and Household Labor Supply

By David Autor, Andreas Kostøl, Magne Mogstad, and Bradley Setzler

American Economic Review, July 2019

There is no evaluation of the consequences of Disability Insurance (DI) receipt that captures the effects on households' net income and consumption expenditure, family labor supply, or benefits from other programs. Combining detailed register data from ...

Betting on beach tourism

[Research Highlight]

May 31, 2019

How do investments in the service sector affect economic growth in developing countries?

The fault in our superstars

[Research Highlight]

July 08, 2019

How do the firms of today match up with the firms of yesterday?

Passing the buck

[Research Highlight]

July 25, 2019

Who pays for a raise in the minimum wage and how does it affect job growth?

A cash and employment conundrum

[Research Highlight]

August 14, 2019

Why do cash-rich companies hire fewer workers?

Why did productivity drop after the Great Recession?

[Research Highlight]

July 12, 2019

Was it just bad luck, or was there something about how businesses responded that drove the slowdown?

Coping without benefits

[Page]

What happens to household spending when unemployment insurance dries up?

Bargaining the future

[Research Highlight]

September 17, 2019

Unions provide protections for teachers, but how do they affect students over the long run?

Weighing the impacts of fracking

[Research Highlight]

October 11, 2019

How should local communities think about the economic and welfare consequences of natural gas development?

Pulling up the jobs ladder

[Research Highlight]

October 28, 2019

When the employed start looking for work, they can crowd out the unemployed.