Similarity of Information and Collective Action

By Deepal Basak, Joyee Deb, and Aditya Kuvalekar

American Economic Review, April 2026

We study a canonical collective action game with incomplete information. Individuals attempt to coordinate to achieve a shared goal, while also facing a temptation to free-ride. More similar information can help them coordinate, but it can also exacerbate...

Abundance from Abroad: Migrant Income and Long-Run Economic Development

By Gaurav Khanna, Emir Murathanoglu, Caroline Theoharides, and Dean Yang

American Economic Review, April 2026

We study how international migrant income prospects affect long-run development in origin areas. We leverage the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis exchange rate shocks in a shift-share identification strategy across Philippine provinces. Initial migrant income ...

Making Bricks from Straw: Resources and Productivity in Health Care

By Edward N. Okeke

American Economic Review, April 2026

Why do health facilities in developing countries do so poorly? This paper examines the role of financial constraints. I describe an experiment in which we surprised health workers in randomly selected public health clinics in Nigeria with a ₦600,000 gra...

AEA Distinguished Service Award

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This award is to recognize the volunteer efforts of individuals who have served the economics profession.

Optimal Procurement Design: A Reduced-Form Approach

By Kun Zhang

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

Standard procurement models assume that the buyer knows the quality of the good at the time of procurement; however, in many settings, the quality is learned only long after the transaction. We study procurement problems in which the buyer’s valuatio...

Public Debt Levels and Real Interest Rates: Causal Evidence from Parliamentary Elections

By Gabriel Ehrlich, Owen Kay, and Aditi Thapar

American Economic Review: Insights

We use close parliamentary elections as natural experiments to estimate the debt sensitivity of interest rates. Relative to an election in which one party barely secures a majority, an election in which no party achieves a majority causes the debt-to-GD...

Rules versus Discretion without Common Knowledge

By Zhen Huo and Fei Zhou

American Economic Review: Insights

The Missing Poor

By Torsten Figueiredo Walter, Niclas Moneke, and Ana Radu

American Economic Review: Insights

Population censuses constitute the basis of public resource allocation and political representation globally. This paper shows that census forms commonly generate incentives for enumerators to disproportionately omit members of larger households. Using...

Shareholder overlap and drug market competition

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Common ownership between brand and generic pharmaceutical firms significantly reduces generic entry.

The Geography of Child Penalties and Gender Norms: A Pseudo-Event Study Approach

By Henrik Kleven

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

This paper develops a pseudo-event study approach for estimating child penalties using cross-sectional data. The approach produces estimates that align closely with those obtained from true event studies using panel data and is statistically more preci...

Disastrous Displacement: The Long-Run Impacts of Landslides

By Travis Baseler and Jakob Hennig

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

Natural disasters displace millions of people a year, but their economic impacts are difficult to study when the affected population becomes dispersed. This paper estimates the longrun impacts of six landslides in Uganda on nearly the full affected popu...

Forward-Looking Labor Supply Responses to Changes in Pension Wealth: Evidence from Germany

By Elisabeth Artmann, Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln, and Giulia Giupponi

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

We provide new evidence of forward-looking labor supply responses to changes in pension wealth. We exploit a 2014 German reform that increased pension wealth for mothers by an average of 4.4% per child born before January 1, 1992. Using administrative d...

Landing on Water: Air Interdiction, Drug-Trafficking Displacement, and Violence in the Brazilian Amazon

By Leila Pereira, Rafael Pucci, and Rodrigo R. Soares

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

We study a Force-down/Shoot-down intervention in Brazil that led cocaine traffickers to shift from air to river routes. Using data on cocaine production, homicides, and the network of rivers in the Amazon, we provide evidence that violence increased in ...

AEJ Best Paper Awards

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View articles selected for the annual AEJ Best Paper Awards.

Foreign Honorary Members

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View the list of Foreign Honorary Members

Donald Andrews, Distinguished Fellow 2026

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N. Gregory Mankiw, Distinguished Fellow 2026

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Robert A. Margo, Distinguished Fellow 2026

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Marjorie McElroy, Distinguished Fellow 2026

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Do Carbon Offsets Offset Carbon?

By Raphael Calel, Jonathan Colmer, Antoine Dechezleprêtre, and Matthieu Glachant

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2025

We develop and implement a new method for identifying wasted subsidies and use it to provide systematic evidence of the misallocation of carbon offsets in the Clean Development Mechanism—the world's largest carbon offset program. Using newly constructed...