Optimism about Graduation and College Financial Aid

By Emily G. Moschini, Gajendran Raveendranathan, and Ming Xu

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

In the United States, college dropout risk is sizable. We provide new empirical evidence that beliefs about the likelihood of earning a bachelor’s degree predict college enrollment, and that the distribution of these beliefs exhibits widespread optimi...

Did the US Really Grow Out of Its World War II Debt?

By Julien Acalin and Laurence Ball

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

This paper examines the effects of primary budget surpluses, surprise inflation, and pegged interest rates before the Fed-Treasury Accord of 1951 on the U.S. public debt/GDP ratio. We find that with primary budget balance and without the distortions in...

Heterogeneity in Risky Choice Behavior in a Broad Population

By Hans-Martin von Gaudecker, Arthur van Soest, and Erik Wengström

American Economic Review, April 2011

We analyze risk preferences using an experiment with real incentives in a representative sample of 1,422 Dutch respondents. Our econometric model incorporates four structural parameters that vary with observed and unobserved characteristics: utility curva...

Janet Currie, Distinguished Fellow 2025

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Distinguished Fellows

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Learn more about the Distinguished Fellows Award and recipients

Why Is the Fragmented Municipal Bond Market So Costly to Investors and Issuers?

[Symposium: Bond Markets]

By John M. Griffin, Nicholas Hirschey, and Samuel Kruger

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

The municipal bond market plays a crucial role in providing capital to US municipalities and functions through a network of underwriters, municipal advisors, credit rating agencies, insurers, individual and institutional investors, and multiple regulators...

How US Treasuries Can Remain the World's Safe Haven

[Symposium: Bond Markets]

By Darrell Duffie

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Weaknesses in the design of the market for US Treasuries have reduced the effectiveness of world's favored safe-haven asset. Since the Global Financial Crisis, the market's intermediation capacity is far more constrained by the balance sheets of dealer ba...

Lessons for the United States from Pharmaceutical Regulation Abroad

[Symposium: Drug Pricing and Regulation]

By Margaret K. Kyle

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Pharmaceutical markets are characterized by barriers to entry and information problems. Many countries intervene in the pricing and reimbursement of drugs to a greater extent than the US government to date. Continued pressure from politicians and recent l...

The Economics of Generic Drug Shortages: The Limits of Competition

[Symposium: Drug Pricing and Regulation]

By Rena M. Conti and Marta E. Wosińska

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

We examine the economics of the US generic prescription drug market, which comprises the majority of medicines sold. The market is celebrated for its benefits in the form of high quality and low prices for consumers but is also increasingly challenged by ...

Public Finance Implications of Economic Inequality

[Symposium: Income Inequality]

By Alan J. Auerbach

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

This paper considers questions about the implications of rising inequality for the theory and practice of public finance. It begins by addressing fundamental reasons why the distribution of income or wealth on an annual basis before taxes and transfers of...

Patents, Innovation, and Competition in Pharmaceuticals: The Hatch-Waxman Act after 40 Years

[Symposium: Drug Pricing and Regulation]

By C. Scott Hemphill and Bhaven N. Sampat

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

A central policy issue in pharmaceuticals is how to balance the dynamic benefits of new drugs against the static benefits of low prices for existing drugs. In the United States, that balance is set by the Hatch-Waxman Act. We review the Act's origins and ...

Measuring Income and Income Inequality

[Symposium: Income Inequality]

By Conor Clarke and Wojciech Kopczuk

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Income inequality is important, but attempts to measure it arrive at strikingly different conclusions. Why? We use recent disputes over measuring United States income inequality to return to first principles about both the income concept and inequality me...

Macro Perspectives on Income Inequality

[Symposium: Income Inequality]

By Matthieu Gomez

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Inequality has become a defining challenge for modern economies and a central focus of economic research over the past two decades. I begin by revisiting the foundations of income measurement, showing that standard definitions—taxable income, factor inc...

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Federal Reserve Participation in Fixed Income Markets

[Symposium: Bond Markets]

By Nina Boyarchenko and Or Shachar

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

We review US dealer-intermediated fixed income markets, including Treasuries, agency mortgage-backed securities, corporate bonds, and municipal bonds. Through the lenses of primary dealers' positions, we show these markets' evolution over the past decade ...

Economic Markets and Pharmaceutical Innovation

[Symposium: Drug Pricing and Regulation]

By Craig Garthwaite

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Pharmaceutical innovations reach the market after a long and risky process that requires large, fixed, and sunk investments. Governments provide incentives for firms to make these investments through various forms of intellectual property protection that ...

US Corporate Bond Markets: Bigger and (Maybe) Better?

[Symposium: Bond Markets]

By Maureen O'Hara and Xing (Alex) Zhou

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

The US corporate bond market has expanded significantly, fueled by electronic trading, institutional innovation, and growing retail participation via mutual and exchange-traded funds. These developments have improved efficiency by reducing costs and enhan...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

Retrospectives: Yair Mundlak and the Fixed Effects Estimator

By Marc F. Bellemare and Daniel L. Millimet

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025

We discuss Yair Mundlak's (1927–2015) contribution to econometrics through the lens of the fixed effects estimator. We set the stage by discussing Mundlak's life and his seminal 1961 article in the Journal of Farm Economics, showing how it was ...

Trade reform, EU competitiveness, and Xi Jinping's economy

[News]

April 24, 2025

Reading recommendations from Timothy Taylor, managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives"