Presidential Address: Investing in Children to Address the Child Mental Health Crisis

By Janet Currie

American Economic Review, May 2025

The child mental health crisis has been described as the "defining public health crisis of our time." This article addresses three myths about the crisis: (i) the idea that the crisis is new; (ii) the belief that increases in youth suicide mainly reflect ...

Does Entry Remedy Collusion? Evidence from the Generic Prescription Drug Cartel

By Amanda Starc and Thomas G. Wollmann

American Economic Review, May 2025

Entry represents a fundamental threat to cartels. We study the extent and effect of this behavior in the largest price-fixing case in US history, which involves generic drug manufacturing. We link information on the cartel's internal operations to regulat...

The Role of People versus Places in Individual Carbon Emissions

By Eva Lyubich

American Economic Review, May 2025

There is substantial spatial heterogeneity in household carbon emissions. I leverage movers in two decades of administrative Decennial Census and American Community Survey data to estimate place effects—the amount by which carbon emissions change for th...

Efficiency in Household Decision-Making: Evidence from the Retirement Savings of US Couples

By Taha Choukhmane, Lucas Goodman, and Cormac O'Dea

American Economic Review, May 2025

We study how couples allocate retirement-saving contributions across each spouse's account. In a new dataset covering over a million US individuals, we find retirement contributions are not allocated to the account with the highest employer match rate. Th...

Changing Tracks: Human Capital Investment after Loss of Ability

By Anders Humlum, Jakob R. Munch, and Pernille Plato

American Economic Review, May 2025

We provide the first evidence on how workers invest in human capital after losing ability. Using quasi-random work accidents in Danish administrative data, we find that workers enroll in bachelor's programs after physical injuries, pursuing degrees that b...

When Do "Nudges" Increase Welfare?

By Hunt Allcott, Daniel Cohen, William Morrison, and Dmitry Taubinsky

American Economic Review, May 2025

We use public finance sufficient statistic approaches to characterize the welfare effects of "nudges," such as simplified information and warning labels, in markets with taxes and endogenous prices. While many studies focus on average effects, we show tha...

Risk Aversion and Insurance Propensity

By Fabio Maccheroni, Massimo Marinacci, Ruodu Wang, and Qinyu Wu

American Economic Review, May 2025

We provide a new foundation of risk aversion by showing that this attitude is fully captured by the propensity to seize insurance opportunities. In our main results, we first characterize Arrow-Pratt (1963–1964) risk aversion in terms of propensity to f...

Selling Subscriptions

By Liran Einav, Ben Klopack, and Neale Mahoney

American Economic Review, May 2025

We study one benefit to firms of selling subscriptions: the prospect that consumers will continue to pay for subscriptions they no longer value. We use comprehensive data from a large payment card network to document that months during which cards are rep...

How Do Mental Health Treatment Delays Impact Long-Term Mortality?

By Sydney Costantini

American Economic Review, May 2025

With a growing mental health crisis and a shortage of behavioral health specialists, those seeking mental health treatment often face long wait times to obtain care. I study how clinic congestion affects mortality for veterans experiencing mental health e...

Hardnose the Dictator

By Todd L. Cherry, Peter Frykblom, and Jason F. Shogren

American Economic Review, September 2002

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Economic Markets and Pharmaceutical Innovation

[Symposium: Drug Pricing and Regulation]

By Craig Garthwaite

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Pharmaceutical innovations reach the market after a long and risky process that requires large, fixed, and sunk investments. Governments provide incentives for firms to make these investments through various forms of intellectual property protection that ...

Patents, Innovation, and Competition in Pharmaceuticals: The Hatch-Waxman Act after 40 Years

[Symposium: Drug Pricing and Regulation]

By C. Scott Hemphill and Bhaven N. Sampat

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

A central policy issue in pharmaceuticals is how to balance the dynamic benefits of new drugs against the static benefits of low prices for existing drugs. In the United States, that balance is set by the Hatch-Waxman Act. We review the Act's origins and ...

Lessons for the United States from Pharmaceutical Regulation Abroad

[Symposium: Drug Pricing and Regulation]

By Margaret K. Kyle

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Pharmaceutical markets are characterized by barriers to entry and information problems. Many countries intervene in the pricing and reimbursement of drugs to a greater extent than the US government to date. Continued pressure from politicians and recent l...

Competitive Pressure and Labor Productivity: World Iron-Ore Markets in the 1980's

By José E. Galdón-Sánchez and James A. Schmitz Jr.

American Economic Review, September 2002

The Economics of Generic Drug Shortages: The Limits of Competition

[Symposium: Drug Pricing and Regulation]

By Rena M. Conti and Marta E. Wosińska

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

We examine the economics of the US generic prescription drug market, which comprises the majority of medicines sold. The market is celebrated for its benefits in the form of high quality and low prices for consumers but is also increasingly challenged by ...

Measuring Income and Income Inequality

[Symposium: Income Inequality]

By Conor Clarke and Wojciech Kopczuk

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Income inequality is important, but attempts to measure it arrive at strikingly different conclusions. Why? We use recent disputes over measuring United States income inequality to return to first principles about both the income concept and inequality me...

Macro Perspectives on Income Inequality

[Symposium: Income Inequality]

By Matthieu Gomez

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Inequality has become a defining challenge for modern economies and a central focus of economic research over the past two decades. I begin by revisiting the foundations of income measurement, showing that standard definitions—taxable income, factor inc...

Public Finance Implications of Economic Inequality

[Symposium: Income Inequality]

By Alan J. Auerbach

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

This paper considers questions about the implications of rising inequality for the theory and practice of public finance. It begins by addressing fundamental reasons why the distribution of income or wealth on an annual basis before taxes and transfers of...

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Federal Reserve Participation in Fixed Income Markets

[Symposium: Bond Markets]

By Nina Boyarchenko and Or Shachar

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

We review US dealer-intermediated fixed income markets, including Treasuries, agency mortgage-backed securities, corporate bonds, and municipal bonds. Through the lenses of primary dealers' positions, we show these markets' evolution over the past decade ...