What Limits College Success? A Review and Further Analysis of Holzer and Baum's Making College Work

By Philip Oreopoulos

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2021

Harry J. Holzer and Sandy Baum's recent book, Making College Work: Pathways to Success for Disadvantaged Students, provides an excellent up-to-date review of higher education. My review first summarizes its key themes: (i) who gains from college ...

Foreign Influence and Domestic Policy

By Toke S. Aidt, Facundo Albornoz, and Esther Hauk

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2021

In an interconnected world, economic and political interests inevitably reach beyond national borders. Since policy choices generate external economic and political costs, foreign state and non-state actors have an interest in influencing policy actions i...

A Review of Thomas Sowell's Discrimination and Disparities

By Jennifer L. Doleac

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2021

In Discrimination and Disparities, Thomas Sowell describes how economists think about the causes of disparities in socioeconomic outcomes. He cautions against government intervention to reduce disparities, noting that such interventions often hav...

Counterfactuals, Empires, and Institutions: Reflections on Walter Scheidel's Escape from Rome

By Mark Koyama

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2021

This essay reviews Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity by Walter Scheidel. It examines the argument that Europe's persistent fragmentation following the collapse of the Roman Empire is responsible for the origins of...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2021

Book Reviews

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2021

Annotated Listing of New Books

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2021

JEL Classification System

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2021

Getting the best election candidates

[Research Highlight]

May 25, 2021

Are voters better off choosing directly or delegating to party leaders?

Applying themselves

[Page]

Could reframing offers of financial aid help close the college-going gap between high- and low-income students?

Book Launch Webinar Celebrating Sadie T.M. Alexander

[News]

June 03, 2021

The event on June 15 includes a panel who will honor the contributions of America’s first Black economist.

Well-being and poverty

[Research Highlight]

May 11, 2021

There are important considerations beyond incentives to work more.

Making economic tools more reliable

[Research Highlight]

June 08, 2021

An interview with Isaiah Andrews, the 2021 John Bates Clark Medalist

"Drowning in products"

[Research Highlight]

June 02, 2021

Are consumers helped more by professional critics’ reviews or crowd-based ratings?

Digitization and Pre-purchase Information: The Causal and Welfare Impacts of Reviews and Crowd Ratings

By Imke Reimers and Joel Waldfogel

American Economic Review, June 2021

Digitization has led to many new creative products, straining the capacity of professional critics and consumers. Yet, the digitization of retailing has also delivered new crowd-based sources of pre-purchase information. We compare the relative impacts of...

Variation in punishment

[Page]

How much does racial heterogeneity affect the severity of criminal sentencing?

2017 ASSA Annual Meeting

[Page]

Collaborative versus adversarial contact

[Research Highlight]

June 17, 2021

How do shared goals among different social groups impact prejudice?

Types of Contact: A Field Experiment on Collaborative and Adversarial Caste Integration

By Matt Lowe

American Economic Review, June 2021

I estimate the effects of collaborative and adversarial intergroup contact. I randomly assigned Indian men from different castes to participate in cricket leagues or to serve as a control group. League players faced variation in collaborative contact, thr...

How COVID-19 exacerbated the gender gap in academia

[Page]

Time spent on research fell dramatically, especially for women, as parents adjusted to life with kids in quarantine.