Strengthening State Capacity: Civil Service Reform and Public Sector Performance during the Gilded Age

By Abhay Aneja and Guo Xu

American Economic Review, August 2024

We use newly digitized records from the post office to study the effects of strengthened state capacity between 1875 and 1901. Exploiting the implementation of the Pendleton Act—a landmark statute that shielded bureaucrats from political interference—...

Call for nominations for CSWEP’s Carolyn Shaw Bell Award

[News]

April 19, 2024

Nominations are due by September 24, 2024.

Call for nominations for CSWEP’s Elaine Bennett Research Prize

[News]

April 19, 2024

Nominations are due by September 24, 2024.

Register Now for the Live Workshop Hosted by the Ombuds Team Thursday, September 19

[News]

September 09, 2024

View the AEA Member Announcement from September 17th, 2024.

Remote learning

[Page]

How does online learning compare to in-person learning at the college level?

New This Year at ASSA 2025: Lightning Round Sessions

[News]

July 11, 2024

Call for Research Proposals: The Kroner Center for Financial Research (KCFR)

[News]

September 25, 2024

The submission deadline is December 2, 2024.

Social organization and redistribution

[Research Highlight]

September 25, 2024

Jacob Moscona discusses how social structure shapes spillover effects of economic development policies.

Age Set versus Kin: Culture and Financial Ties in East Africa

By Jacob Moscona and Awa Ambra Seck

American Economic Review, September 2024

We study how social organization shapes patterns of economic interaction and the effects of national policy, focusing on the distinction between age-based and kin-based groups in sub-Saharan Africa. Motivated by ethnographic accounts suggesting that this ...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

When Dad Can Stay Home: Fathers' Workplace Flexibility and Maternal Health

By Petra Persson and Maya Rossin-Slater

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

We study how fathers' access to workplace flexibility affects maternal postpartum health. We use variation from a Swedish reform that granted new fathers more flexibility to take intermittent parental leave during the postpartum period and show that incre...

Optimal Sin Taxation and Market Power

By Martin O'Connell and Kate Smith

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

We study how market power impacts the efficiency and redistributive properties of sin taxation, with an empirical application to sugar-sweetened beverage taxation. We estimate an equilibrium model of the UK drinks market, which we embed in a tax design fr...

Schoolgirls, Not Brides: Education as a Shield against Child Marriage

By Hélène Giacobino, Elise Huillery, Bastien Michel, and Mathilde Sage

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

We study the impact of a scholarship-based intervention aimed to reduce child marriage by fostering secondary education among adolescent girls in Niger. Using a large-scale randomized controlled trial, we find that after three years of implementation, the...

Preferences, Access, and the STEM Gender Gap in Centralized High School Assignment

By Diana Ngo and Andrew Dustan

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

The gender gap in STEM widens during high school due both to differences in student choices and institutional barriers to accessing STEM education. Using rich data from Mexico City's centralized assignment system and a structural model of high school choi...

Experience-Based Discrimination

By Louis-Pierre Lepage

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

I study discrimination arising from individual experiences of employers with worker groups. I present a model in which employers are uncertain about the productivity of one of two groups and learn through hiring. Positive experiences lead to positive bias...

Distortion by Audit: Evidence from Public Procurement

By Maria Paula Gerardino, Stephan Litschig, and Dina Pomeranz

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

Public sector audits are key to state capacity. However, they can create unintended distortions. Regression discontinuity analysis from Chile shows that audits lowered the use of auctions for public procurement, reduced supplier competition, and increased...

Noise, Cognitive Function, and Worker Productivity

By Joshua T. Dean

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

Noisy workplaces common in low- and middle-income countries can impair workers' cognitive functions. However, whether this lowers earnings depends on the importance of these functions for productivity and whether workers understand these effects. I study ...

Customer Capital Spillovers: Evidence from Sales Managers in International Markets

By Bérengère Patault and Clémence Lenoir

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

Expanding their customer base is crucial for firms to grow. This paper leverages sales managers' job-to-job transitions to better understand how buyer-seller relationships form. Combining unique French firm-to-firm trade data with matched employer-employe...

Expected Returns to Crime and Crime Location

By Nils Braakmann, Arnaud Chevalier, and Tanya Wilson

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

We provide first evidence that variations in the expected returns to crime affect the location of property crime. Our identification strategy relies on the widely held perception in the United Kingdom that South Asian households store gold jewelry at home...

Independent Media, Propaganda, and Religiosity: Evidence from Poland

By Irena Grosfeld, Etienne Madinier, Seyhun Orcan Sakalli, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2024

Exploring a drastic change in media landscape in Poland, we show that mainstream media can significantly affect religious participation. After nationalist populist party PiS came to power in 2015, news on state and private independent TV diverged due to p...