Childcare, Labor Supply, and Business Development: Experimental Evidence from Uganda

By Kjetil Bjorvatn, Denise Ferris, Selim Gulesci, Arne Nasgowitz, Vincent Somville, and Lore Vandewalle

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2025

We randomly offered a childcare subsidy, an equivalent cash grant, or both to mothers of three-to-five-year-old children. The childcare subsidy substantially increased the labor supply and earnings of single mothers, highlighting the importance of time co...

The Geography of Consumption and Local Economic Shocks: The Case of the Great Recession

By Abe Dunn and Mahsa Gholizadeh

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2025

We estimate across-county spending flows between firms and consumers for every county in the United States, providing a new consumption link that has not been studied previously. We highlight the importance of this link by estimating the effect of changes...

Does Unemployment Risk Affect Business Cycle Dynamics?

By Sebastian Graves

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2025

In this paper, I show that the decline in consumption during unemployment depends on both liquid and illiquid wealth; that unemployment predicts illiquid asset withdrawal, primarily when households have few liquid assets; and that increased idiosyncratic ...

Trade Shocks and Credit Reallocation

By Stefano Federico, Fadi Hassan, and Veronica Rappoport

American Economic Review, April 2025

This paper identifies a credit-supply contraction that arises endogenously after trade liberalization. Banks with loan portfolios concentrated in sectors exposed to competition from China face an increase in nonperforming loans after China's entry into th...

Climate shocks and the economy

[Research Highlight]

April 29, 2025

Is the US economy adapting to more severe weather patterns?

Severe Weather and the Macroeconomy

By Hee Soo Kim, Christian Matthes, and Toàn Phan

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2025

We investigate the impact of severe weather shocks on the US macroeconomy over the past 60 years. Using a nonlinear vector autoregressive model, we find robust evidence of time-varying effects. While negligible at the beginning of the sample, the impact b...

Rebuilding careers

[Research Highlight]

May 27, 2025

Higher education can help injured workers transition to higher-paying occupations.

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...

Regional Dissent: Do Local Economic Conditions Influence FOMC Votes?

By Anton Bobrov, Rupal Kamdar, and Mauricio Ulate

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2025

US monetary policy decisions are made by the 12 voting members of the FOMC, seven of which inherently represent national-level interests. The remaining members, a rotating group of presidents from the 12 Federal Reserve districts, come instead from subnat...

Who Benefits from Online Gig Economy Platforms?

By Christopher T. Stanton and Catherine Thomas

American Economic Review, June 2025

Online labor platforms for short-term remote work have many more job seekers than available jobs. Despite their relative abundance, workers capture a substantial share of the surplus from transactions. We draw this conclusion from demand estimates that im...

Patterns of Artificial Intelligence Adoption by Hospitals

By Avi Goldfarb, Xianda (Henry) He, and Florenta Teodoridis

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

This study examines artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in US hospitals using three distinct datasets: survey data from the American Hospital Association on AI for operations-related uses (27 percent adopt), employment data from Revelio Labs on workers ...

Unhoused and Mismeasured: The Accuracy of Surveys of Those Experiencing Homelessness

By Bruce D. Meyer, Angela Wyse, Gillian Meyer, Alexa Grunwaldt, and Derek Wu

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We examine the accuracy of self-reported information from homeless shelter residents in the American Community Survey by comparing survey responses to administrative records. While basic demographic information (age, gender, and citizenship) is reported w...

Labor Market Attachment and Perceived Barriers to Work among Homeless Families

By Nour Abdul-Razzak, John Eric Humphries, Stephen Stapleton, and Winnie van Dijk

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We study labor market attachment among homeless families using baseline survey data from a large-scale study in Illinois. Of homeless parents, 40 percent worked in the past month. Among those not working, most report wanting and actively searching for a j...

Trade Policy Uncertainty and the Labor Market: State-Level Evidence

By Céline Poilly and Fabien Tripier

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

This paper provides US state-level evidence regarding the effects of trade policy uncertainty on the labor market. We show that a higher exposure to trade policy uncertainty generates a contraction in total hours worked at the state level. The extensive m...

AI and Women's Employment in Europe

By Stefania Albanesi, António Dias da Silva, Juan F. Jimeno, Ana Lamo, and Alena Wabitsch

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We examine the link between the diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technologies and changes in the female employment share in 16 European countries over the period 2011–2019. Using data for occupations at the three-digit level, we find th...

How Different Uses of AI Shape Labor Demand: Evidence from France

By Philippe Aghion, Simon Bunel, Xavier Jaravel, Thomas Mikaelsen, Alexandra Roulet, and Jakob Søgaard

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

Using French firm-level data on AI adoption from 2017–2020, we find that, first, firms adopting AI are larger and more productive and skill intensive. Second, difference-in-difference estimates reveal an increase in firm-level employment and sales after...

Enabling Employment: How Do Employer Disability Practices Affect Disability Employment Outcomes?

By Lawrence Houston and Douglas Kruse

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We use panel data from 235 firms from 2019–2023 to examine how disability-related practices affect disability employment outcomes, using a detailed annual survey of large US companies in the National Organization on Disability, which collectively employ...

SMEs and Workers during Crises: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic in Uganda

By Selim Gulesci, Francesco Loiacono, Andreas Madestam, and Miri Stryjan

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

We use a five-year panel of Ugandan SMEs, supplemented with phone-survey data from August 2020, to analyze how the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic affected profits and employment. Most firms had employees, enabling us to investigate whether—and how—the...

Economic Measurement Lost in a Random Forest? A Case Study of Employment Data

By Abe Dunn, Eric English, Kyle Hood, Lowell Mason, and Brian Quistorff

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

Big data and machine learning (ML) offer transformative potential for economic measurement. This study evaluates the use of alternative employment data from a payroll processor to improve on timely measures of regional employment estimates, comparing ML m...

From Online Job Postings to Economic Insights: A Machine Learning Approach to Structuring Naturally Occurring Data

By Tatjana Dahlhaus, Reinhard Ellwanger, Gabriela Galassi, and Pierre-Yves Yanni

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

This paper develops a matched vacancy-company dataset by combining daily Canadian online job postings with smartphone-derived visits to points of interest. To address inconsistencies in company names, we enhance natural language processing algorithms for ...