A quiet revolution

[Research Highlight]

January 27, 2026

The role of faith-based government policies in reshaping Americans’ beliefs and values.

Innovation through Inventor Mobility: Evidence from Non-Compete Agreements

By Kate Reinmuth and Emma Rockall

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

Proponents of labor mobility restrictions argue that innovation incentives more than offset harm to workers. Yet the causal effect of such policies on innovation is an open empirical question. Leveraging plausibly exogenous state-level changes in the en...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

Black Lives: The High Cost of Segregation

By Robynn Cox, Jamein P. Cunningham, Alberto Ortega, and Kenneth Whaley

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

Exploiting the arrangement of railroad tracks in northern cities, we explore the extent to which segregation impacts homicide victimization by race. Our results reveal a robust positive relationship between segregation and non-White homicide victimization...

Are Complementary Policies Substitutes? Evidence from R&D Subsidies in the United Kingdom

By Jacquelyn Pless

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

This paper studies whether grants and tax incentives for private R&D are complements or substitutes. I use multiple quasi-experimental research designs to examine firms in the United Kingdom and find that increasing tax credit generosity substantially enh...

Polling Place Location and the Costs of Voting

By Gaurav Bagwe ⓡ Juan Margitic ⓡ Allison Stashko

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

We study how distance to one's polling place affects the likelihood of voting using a geographic regression discontinuity design with data from Pennsylvania and Georgia. A one-mile increase in distance to the polling place reduces the likelihood of voting...

Insecurity and Firm Displacement: Evidence from Afghan Corporate Phone Records

By Sylvan Herskowitz, Joshua E. Blumenstock, Tarek Ghani, Ethan B. Kapstein, Thomas L. Scherer, and Ott Toomet

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

We provide empirical evidence on how insecurity affects firm behavior by linking data on deadly terrorist attacks in Afghanistan to geolocated data on corporate mobile phone activity. We first develop an approach to estimate the geographic footprint of fi...

Geographic Variation in Mental Health Treatment Utilization: Evidence from Migration

By Hui Ding

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

The older population bears a heavy burden of mental illness. Despite the availability of effective treatments, including services (e.g., psychotherapy) and drugs (e.g., antidepressants, antipsychotics), this paper documents substantial geographic variatio...

Sweeping up Gangs: The Effects of Tough-on-Crime Policies from a Network Approach

By Magdalena Domínguez

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

Globally, gang proliferation is fought primarily through sweeps. This paper uses a difference-in-differences strategy to examine their causal impact on crime for arrested individuals and their peers. Analysis focuses on the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona,...

Invisible Wounds: How Mental Disability Benefits Shape Veteran Well-Being

By David Silver and Jonathan Zhang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

We study impacts of VA disability compensation on the health and well-being of the large and rapidly growing population of veterans claiming mental disorders. We leverage quasi-random assignment of veterans to medical examiners with varying assessing tend...

Connections during Democratic Transitions: Insights from the Political Purge in Post-WWII France

By Toke S. Aidt, Jean Lacroix, and Pierre-Guillaume Méon

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

We examine how connections shaped transitional justice during France's post-WWII democratic transition. Parliamentarians who had supported the Vichy regime faced a two-stage purge process involving two courts. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, w...

Hacked to Pieces? The Effects of Ransomware Attacks on Hospitals and Patients

By Hannah Neprash, Claire McGlave, and Sayeh Nikpay

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

As cybercriminals increasingly target health care, hospitals face the growing threat of ransomware attacks. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that prevents users from accessing electronic systems and demands a ransom to restore access. We create ...

Cross-State Strategic Voting

By Gordon B. Dahl, Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, and William Mullins

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

We estimate that 3.1 percent of US voters, or 6.1 million individuals, were registered to vote in two states in 2020, opening up the possibility for them to choose where to vote. Double registrants are concentrated in the wealthiest zip codes and respond ...

Social Preferences over Ordinal Outcomes

By Sandro Ambuehl and B. Douglas Bernheim

American Economic Review

We study social preferences in settings where someone who chooses on behalf of others knows how those individuals rank the available options but may lack cardinal information concerning those comparisons. Contrary to majoritarian principles, most people...

Plata y Plomo: How Higher Wages Expose Politicians to Criminal Violence

By Massimo Pulejo and Pablo Querubín

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2026

What is the effect of politicians' wages on corruption in the presence of criminal groups that use both bribes and violence? With a regression discontinuity design and three distinct proxies for corruption, we show that better-paid Italian politicians are...

Scoring the Behavioral Economics of Crime: Reflections on Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence

By Robert J. Sampson

Journal of Economic Literature

In Unforgiving Places, Jens Ludwig makes a strong claim for the behavioral economics of crime, scoring it a knockout when pitted against conventional wisdom. Focusing on gun violence, he proposes a unifying explanation that draws on disciplines bey...

Slava Mikhed on entrepreneurship and age

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How do younger and older entrepreneurs respond to extra wealth?

Lovepreet Singh on public spending and long-run growth

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How do public spending and investment impact the development of regional economies?

Juliet-Nil Uraz on public legal assistance

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How does losing access to legal aid affect welfare?

Andrew Kao on party bans

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How effective are political party bans?