Health Effects of Increasing Income for the Elderly: Evidence from a Chilean Pension Program

By Enrico Miglino, Nicolás Navarrete H., Gonzalo Navarrete H., and Pablo Navarrete H.

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2023

We estimate the effect of a permanent income increase on the health outcomes of the elderly poor. Our regression discontinuity design exploits an eligibility cutoff in a Chilean basic pension program that grants monthly payments to retirees without a cont...

Falling wages and discretionary pay-setting practices

[Research Highlight]

February 06, 2023

A decline in the use of standardized pay rates contributed to stagnating wages from the 1970s to the mid-1990s.

Retrospectives: Edgar Sydenstricker: Household Equivalence Scales and the Causes of Pellagra

By Philip Clarke and Guido Erreygers

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2023

In the early part of the 20th century the disease pellagra, now almost unknown, affected and killed thousands of people in the United States. Some claimed it was an infection, while others maintained it was due to a dietary deficiency. The economist Edg...

Timely Business Dynamics Using Google Places

By Thibaut Duprey, Daniel E. Rigobon, Artur Kotlicki, and Philip Schnattinger

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We introduce a new real-time method to measure business opening and closure rates by relying on Google Places, the data behind the Google Maps platform. We collect data on establishments of customer-facing industries (food, retail, accommodation) and prov...

Measuring Business Trends and Outlook through a New Survey

By Catherine Buffington, Lucia Foster, and Colin Shevlin

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

The Census Bureau's new Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) provides timely information from businesses on their current trends and expectations over core concepts such as prices, employment, and revenue. The BTOS collects qualitative information in...

The Effects of the Monthly and Lump-Sum Child Tax Credit Payments on Food and Housing Hardship

By Zachary Parolin, Elizabeth Ananat, Sophie Collyer, Megan Curran, and Christopher Wimer

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We investigate the effects of the expanded 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) on material hardship among households with children over April 2021–May 2022, using the Census Household Pulse Survey and difference-in-difference analyses of household types with di...

Gendered Disparities during the COVID-19 Crisis in Sierra Leone

By Madison Levine, Niccolò F. Meriggi, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Vasudha Ramakrishna, Maarten Voors, and Uday Wadehra

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

The COVID-19 outbreak had severe adverse impacts on the health and wealth of households in lower-income countries (LICs), and has affected even more severely female-headed households in LICs. Using high-frequency phone surveys in Sierra Leone, we show tha...

Asset-Based Microfinance for Microenterprises: Evidence from Pakistan

By Faisal Bari ⓡ Kashif Malik ⓡ Muhammad Meki ⓡ Simon Quinn

American Economic Review, February 2024

We run a field experiment offering graduated microcredit clients the opportunity to finance a business asset worth four times their usual borrowing limit. We implement this using a hire-purchase contract; our control group is offered a zero interest loan ...

Expanding markets

[Research Highlight]

January 24, 2024

What happens to incumbents when more sellers are added to online platforms?

Go Vegan? Prejudice, (Blind) Experimentation, and Food Choices

By Michèle Belot and Adelson Teh

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

We examine the role of prejudice and experimentation in the evaluation of a nonmainstream product. We conduct a randomized controlled experiment where participants evaluate a plant-based product. We vary (i) whether they can taste the product, (ii) whethe...

The Fading Treatment Effects of a Multifaceted Asset-Transfer Program in Ethiopia

By Nathan Barker, Dean Karlan, Christopher Udry, and Kelsey Wright

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2024

We study the long-run effects of a big-push "graduation" program in Ethiopia in which very poor households received a one-time transfer of productive assets (mainly livestock), technical training, and access to savings accounts. After seven years, treatme...

In-Kind Transfers as Insurance

By Lucie Gadenne, Samuel Norris, Monica Singhal, and Sandip Sukhtankar

American Economic Review, September 2024

Households in developing countries often face variation in the prices of consumption goods. We develop a model demonstrating that in-kind transfers will provide insurance benefits against price risk if the covariance between the marginal utility of income...

Agricultural productivity and chronic disease

[Research Highlight]

October 17, 2024

Sheetal Sekhri discusses the impact of the Green Revolution on long-term health outcomes in India.

Changes in Nutrient Intake at Retirement

By Melvin Stephens Jr. and Desmond Toohey

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2025

Prior research finds food expenditure decreases at retirement, which suggests households are inadequately saving. In contrast, other evidence shows that direct measures of food intake are unaffected by exiting the labor force. Using a wide array of data s...

Did Welfare Reform End the Safety Net as We Knew It? The Record since 1996

[Symposium: US Safety Net]

By Lucie Schmidt, Lara Shore-Sheppard, and Tara Watson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2025

This paper examines the evolution of the safety net for low-income families since welfare reform in 1996 promised to "end welfare as we know it". The total package of supports has become substantially more generous, but has changed in character. Support h...

America’s public safety net

[Research Highlight]

March 18, 2025

Christopher Howard discusses the history of public assistance and social insurance in the United States.

Sustainable Poverty Reduction through Social Assistance: Modality, Context, and Complementary Programming in Bangladesh

By Akhter Ahmed, Melissa Hidrobo, John Hoddinott, Bastien Kolt, Shalini Roy, and Salauddin Tauseef

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2025

Social assistance programs can increase consumption and reduce poverty, but less is known about whether these impacts are sustained after programs end or how design and context influence sustainability. Using data collected in two regions of Bangladesh fo...

Climate shocks and the economy

[Research Highlight]

April 29, 2025

Is the US economy adapting to more severe weather patterns?

How Do Entrants Build Market Share? The Role of Demand Frictions

By David Argente, Doireann Fitzgerald, Sara Moreira, and Anthony Priolo

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2025

We construct a new dataset to show that successful entrants in the consumer food sector build market share by adding new customers. Entrants reach new customers by entering more geographical markets, placing their product in more stores in these markets, ...

The Effect of Emergency Financial Assistance on Mobility, SNAP Receipt, and Presence of Dependents

By Daniel Hungerman, David C. Phillips, Kevin Rinz, James X. Sullivan, and David N. Wasser

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2025

This paper studies emergency financial assistance for people at risk of homelessness using federal tax and census data. We use an established quasi-experimental research design to examine how assistance affects address histories, number of children, and r...