Rising Concentration of Household Shopping, Superstar Firms, and the Implications for Retail Markups

By Justin H. Leung and Zhonglin Li

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2026

This paper documents an increase in the concentration of household shopping in the United States retail sector from 2004 to 2019. Despite a growing number of stores, households visit fewer stores, do more one-stop shopping, and increasingly shop at differ...

Divine Policy: The Impact of Religion in Government

By Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, Alessandro Pizzigolotto, and Lena Lindbjerg Sperling

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2026

Can policies shape personal values and beliefs? To examine, we exploit the staggered introduction of faith-based initiatives across US states. Our difference-in-differences analysis reveals that the initiatives strengthened religiosity and conservative-re...

The Returns to Physical Capital in Knowledge Production: Evidence from Lab Disasters

By Stefano Baruffaldi and Fabian Gaessler

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2026

We investigate the nature and relevance of physical capital in knowledge production. Exploiting adverse events in research laboratories, we find that scientists experience a persistent reduction in research output if they lose specialized physical capital...

Speed Limit Policies: The Output Gap and Optimal Monetary Policy

By Carl Walsh

American Economic Review, March 2003

Disadvantaging Rivals: Vertical Integration in the Pharmaceutical Market

By Charles Gray, Abby Alpert, and Neeraj Sood

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2026

The pharmaceutical market has experienced a wave of vertical integration between pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and insurers in recent years. Using a unique dataset on insurer-PBM contracts, we document increasing vertical integration in Medicare Part D...

From Access to Achievement: The Primary School-Age Impacts of an At-Scale Preschool Construction Program in Highly Deprived Communities

By Marina Bassi, Bruno Besbas, Lelys Dinarte-Diaz, Saravana Ravindran, and Ana Reynoso

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

We evaluate a large-scale public preschool construction program in deprived rural communities in Mozambique using a randomized control trial. The program increased preschool enrollment from 2% to 75%, improved primary school enrollment and progression, ...

Taxation and Entrepreneurship in the United States

By Hans A. Holter, Serhiy Stepanchuk, and Yicheng Wang

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

This paper studies the effects of income taxation on entrepreneurship, empirically and in a structural macro model with entrepreneurial choice. Combining state-level tax data with household and firm data we document that higher and more progressive ta...

Who Gets a Family? The Consequences of Family and Congregate Care Allocation for Child Outcomes

By Cameron Taylor

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

Hundreds of thousands of children grow up in the US foster care system every year and are at high risk of experiencing negative outcomes such as incarceration and homelessness. This paper documents how the placement of foster children into families rat...

Detection of Collusive Networks in Multistage Auctions

By Bruno Baránek, Leon Musolff, and Vítězslav Titl

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

We develop a method for detecting cartels in multistage auctions. Our approach allows firms to act collusively against cartel members yet competitively otherwise. In these auctions, bidders submit initial bids and can later revise them downward. As init...

Perils of the Paperwork: The Impact of Information and Application Assistance on Social Benefit Take-Up in India

By Sarika Gupta

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Governments worldwide administer social programs for vulnerable groups, yet many eligible citizens fail to benefit. This paper studies barriers to take-up of an unconditional cash transfer program for poor women in Delhi, India, where only one-third of...

Prioritizing Benefit? How Low-Income Patients Respond to Prescription Cost-Sharing

By Christopher Hollrah

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

This paper measures how cost-sharing impacts older low-income patients, exploiting a disconti-nuity in eligibility for a prescription drug subsidy for those who lose access to the Medicaid-linked program. Higher drug prices resulting from subsidy loss lea...

On-Demand Assistance: Experimental Evidence from Indonesia

By Rema Hanna, Benjamin A. Olken, Sudarno Sumarto, Achmad Maulana, Vivi Alatas, and Elan Satriawan

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Given labor informality in developing countries, addressing employment shocks is challenging. We study Indonesia’s new approach for on-demand online applications for temporary cash assistance and online job training. Through 20 lotteries over two year...

Does Aid Matter? Measuring the Effect of Student Aid on College Attendance and Completion

By Susan M. Dynarski

American Economic Review, March 2003

Trade Protection Along Supply Chains

By Chad P. Bown, Paola Conconi, Aksel Erbahar, and Lorenzo Trimarchi

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

We combine detailed information on US temporary trade barriers during 1989-2020 with input-output data to study the effects of trade protection along supply chains. We focus on measures imposed against China, which has been the main target of trade protec...

Liquidity Constraints and the Value of Insurance

By Keith M. Ericson and Justin Sydnor

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

Insurance moves resources across both time and states. We study the consumptionsmoothing benefits of insurance under liquidity constraints in a model where contracts span multiple consumption periods. The normative benchmarks for insurance demand under...

Failures of Contingent Reasoning in Annuitization Decisions

By Erzo F.P. Luttmer, Priscila De Oliveira, and Dmitry Taubinsky

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

This paper studies psychological biases in take-up of annuities, using an incentivized experiment with a probability-based sample (N = 3,038). Choosing an annuity was payoff-maximizing in the experiment at all prices, but take-up was incomplete and pri...

The Missing Loan-to-Value Cycle

By Manuel Adelino, W. Ben McCartney, and Antoinette Schoar

American Economic Review: Insights

We show that the equilibrium loan-to-value (LTV) distribution in the US mortgage market has been remarkably stable over the last quarter century, both in aggregate and region-by-region, despite large, cross-sectionally heterogeneous house price cycles....

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2026

Mental Accounts and Consumption Sensitivity across the Distribution of Liquid Assets

By James Graham and Robert A. McDowall

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2026

We study consumption spending responses to predictable income using household-level data from a US financial institution. Even for households with large liquid asset balances, we find no spending in anticipation of income receipt, substantial spending fol...

'Less Is More': Consumer Spending and the Size of Economic Stimulus Payments

By Michelle Andreolli and Paolo Surico

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2026

We study how consumption responds to unexpected, transitory income gains of different sizes using hypothetical questions from the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Affluent households exhibit higher marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) out...