Bones, Bombs, and Break Points: The Geography of Economic Activity

By Donald R. Davis and David E. Weinstein

American Economic Review, December 2002

We consider the distribution of economic activity within a country in light of three leading theories—increasing returns, random growth, and locational fundamentals. To do so, we examine the distribution of regional population in Japan from the Stone Ag...

Reconstruction-Era Education and Long-Run Black-White Inequality

By Daniel B. Jones and Ethan Schmick

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

The Reconstruction era of American history (c. 1866–1877) saw widespread efforts to educate recently freed people—efforts that were partially curtailed after Reconstruction. This paper examines the impact of childhood exposure to educational opportuni...

HBCU Enrollment and Longer-Term Outcomes

By Ashley Edwards, Justin Ortagus, Jonathan Smith, and Andria Smythe

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

Using data from nearly 1.2 million Black SAT takers, we find that students initially enrolling in a historically Black college and university (HBCU) are 14.6 percentage points more likely to earn a bachelor's degree and, around age 30, have 5 percent high...

Routine-Biased Technological Change and Endogenous Skill Investments

By Danyelle Branco, Bladimir Carrillo, and Wilman Iglesias

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

We investigate how individuals alter their educational investments in response to routine-biased technology. We find that individuals growing up in robot-impacted areas are more likely to complete a bachelor's degree and experience a relative increase in ...

Closing the Gender Gap in Patenting: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial at the USPTO

By Nicholas A. Pairolero, Andrew A. Toole, Peter-Anthony Pappas, Charles A. W. de Grazia, and Mike H. M. Teodorescu

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

Analyzing a randomized control trial at the United States Patent and Trademark Office that was designed to provide additional help to applicants who do not have legal representation, we find heterogeneous causal impacts across inventor gender, driven prim...

International Transmission of Inequality through Trade

By Sergey Nigai

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

I examine the international transmission of income inequality through trade. Using firm-level and aggregate data, I find that exporting to more unequal countries increases domestic inequality. I rationalize this finding by developing a model of internatio...

Does the "Boost for Mathematics" Boost Mathematics? A Large-Scale Evaluation of the "Lesson Study" Methodology on Student Performance

By Erik Grönqvist, Björn Öckert, and Olof Rosenqvist

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

Students in East Asian countries dominate international assessments. One possible explanation for their success is the use of "Lesson study" to enhance teaching practices; a collaborative process where teachers plan, observe, and analyze a lesson together...

Should College Be "Free"? Evidence on Free College, Early Commitment, and Merit Aid from an Eight-Year Randomized Trial

By Douglas N. Harris and Jonathan Mills

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

We provide evidence on the effects of college financial aid from an eight-year randomized trial offering ninth graders a $12,000 merit-based grant. The program was designed to be free of tuition/fees at community colleges and substantially lower the cost ...

Terrorism and Voting: The Rise of Right-Wing Populism in Germany

By Navid Sabet, Marius Liebald, and Guido Friebel

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

We document that right-wing terrorism leads to significant increases in vote share for the right-wing, populist AfD (Alternative fur Deutschland) party in Germany. To identify causal effects, we exploit quasi-random variation between successful and failed...

Pandering in the Shadows: How Natural Disasters Affect Special Interest Politics

By Ethan Kaplan, Jörg L. Spenkuch, and Haishan Yuan

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

We exploit the quasi-random timing of natural disasters to study the connection between public attention to politics and legislators' support for special interests. We show that when a disaster strikes, the news media reduce coverage of politics in genera...

Healthy at Work? Evidence from a Social Experimental Evaluation of a Firm-Based Wellness Program

By Marianne Simonsen and Lars Skipper

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

We employ a large social experiment combined with register-based data, allowing for up to 12-year follow-up to evaluate a long-lasting employer-sponsored health and well-being program. We show that employees at treated worksites receive fewer consultation...

Knowledge Spillovers and Inequality

By Jan Eeckhout and Boyan Jovanovic

American Economic Review, December 2002

We develop a dynamic model with knowledge spillovers in production. The model contains two opposing forces. Imitation of other firms helps followers catch up with leaders, but the prospect of doing so makes followers want to free ride. The second force do...

The Making of Civic Virtues: A School-Based Experiment in Three Countries

By Simon Briole, Marc Gurgand, Éric Maurin, Sandra McNally, Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela, and Daniel Santín

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

This paper shows that schools can foster the transmission of civic virtues by helping students to develop concrete, democratically chosen, collective projects. We draw on an RCT implemented in 200 middle schools in three countries. The program leads stude...

Front Matter

American Economic Review, August 2025

Robustness Measures for Welfare Analysis

By Zi Yang Kang and Shoshana Vasserman

American Economic Review, August 2025

Economists routinely make functional form assumptions on demand curves to derive welfare conclusions. How sensitive are these conclusions to such assumptions? In this paper, we develop robustness measures that quantify the extent to which the true demand ...

Economic Status and Health in Childhood: The Origins of the Gradient

By Anne Case, Darren Lubotsky, and Christina Paxson

American Economic Review, December 2002

The well-known positive association between health and income in adulthood has antecedents in childhood. Not only is children's health positively related to household income, but the relationship between household income and children's health becomes more...

Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during US and French Elections

By Rafael Di Tella, Randy Kotti, Caroline Le Pennec, and Vincent Pons

American Economic Review, August 2025

We study changes in political discourse during campaigns, using a novel dataset of candidate websites for US House elections, 2002–2016, and manifestos for French parliamentary and local elections, 1958–2022. We find that candidates move to the center...

Employers and Unemployment Insurance Take-Up

By Marta Lachowska, Isaac Sorkin, and Stephen A. Woodbury

American Economic Review, August 2025

We quantify the employer's role in unemployment insurance (UI) take-up. Employer effects on claiming and appeals are substantial, and those effects are negatively correlated, consistent with appeals deterring claims. Low-wage workers are less likely to cl...

Power Flows: Transmission Lines, Allocative Efficiency, and Corporate Profits

By Catherine Hausman

American Economic Review, August 2025

Accelerated investment in electricity transmission could reduce total costs and enhance renewable integration. I document static allocative inefficiencies induced by incomplete market integration in 2 major US markets; these have risen over time and total...

Cursed Sequential Equilibrium

By Meng-Jhang Fong, Po-Hsuan Lin, and Thomas R. Palfrey

American Economic Review, August 2025

This paper develops a framework to extend the strategic form analysis of cursed equilibrium (CE) developed by Eyster and Rabin (2005) to multistage games. The approach uses behavioral strategies rather than normal form mixed strategies and imposes sequent...