American Economic Review: Insights — Editor Search: Request for Suggestions

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February 03, 2026

View the AEA Member Announcement from February 3, 2026.

The hidden social costs of cancer

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A Danish study shows that an adverse health shock increases the chances of criminal behavior.

Antitrust Enforcement in Labor Markets

[Symposium: Competition in Labor Markets]

By Elena Prager

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

Until recently, antitrust laws were rarely enforced in labor markets. Although the existence of labor market power has long been recognized, evidence only recently emerged that such market power regularly arises from sources that are actionable under anti...

Asian Immigration to the United States in Historical Perspective

[Symposium: Asian Americans]

By Hannah M. Postel

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing immigrant group in the United States, yet Asian immigration remains relatively understudied in quantitative social science. This paper reviews the historical evolution of Asian immigration, focusing on six major ori...

From Asia, with Skills

[Symposium: Asian Americans]

By Gaurav Khanna

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

This paper examines the rise of high-skill migration from Asia to the United States since 1990 and its consequences for sending and receiving economies. Over 1990–2019, migrants from India, China, South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines accounted for ov...

Labor Market Power: From Micro Evidence to Macro Consequences

[Symposium: Competition in Labor Markets]

By David Berger, Kyle Herkenhoff, and Simon Mongey

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

The traditional theoretical and empirical "micro approach" to studying labor market power (or monopsony) requires that firms are small and atomistic. This is at odds with the reality of labor markets in which monopsony potentially matters most. Empiricall...

The Economics of Noncompete Clauses

[Symposium: Competition in Labor Markets]

By Evan Starr

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

For over 600 years, debates over noncompete clauses have centered on whether they function as efficient contracting tools or anticompetitive restraints on workers. This article reassesses that debate in light of recent policy attention and new empirical a...

Occupational Licensing in the United States

[Symposium: Competition in Labor Markets]

By Janna E. Johnson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

Occupational licensing—the requirement that individuals attain a license to legally perform a specific job—is now necessary for over a fifth of the US workforce. The policy is intended to protect consumers by ensuring members of licensed occupations m...

Family Institutions and the Global Fertility Transition

[Symposium: Fertility Rates]

By Paula E. Gobbi, Anne Hannusch, and Pauline Rossi

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

Much of the observed cross-country variation in fertility aligns with the predictions of classic theories of the fertility transition: countries with higher levels of human capital, higher GDP per capita, or lower mortality rates tend to exhibit lower fer...

Global Labor Mobility between Shrinking and Growing Labor Forces

[Symposium: Fertility Rates]

By Lant Pritchett

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

Falling fertility and improved mortality create a powerful and inexorable demographic arithmetic of ageing in the coming decades around the world, with three patterns. The richest countries, along with China and the Former Soviet Union, will see absolute ...

How Much Would Continued Low Fertility Affect the US Standard of Living?

[Symposium: Fertility Rates]

By David N. Weil

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

I assess the effect of continued sub-replacement fertility on age-adjusted consumption per capita. Channels assessed include transfers from working-age adults to children and the elderly, the effect of the labor force growth rate on required capital inves...

The Likelihood of Persistently Low Global Fertility

[Symposium: Fertility Rates]

By Michael Geruso and Dean Spears

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

For the world as a whole, average birth rates have been falling for decades—from about 5 in 1950 to a little above 2 today. Two-thirds of people today live in a country where the birth rate is below an average of two children per two adults, which means...

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Timothy Taylor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026

Rainfall Inequality, Political Power, and Ethnic Conflict in Africa

By Andrea Guariso and Thorsten Rogall

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

How are ethnic inequality and ethnic violence related? We empirically investigate this question using an innovative measure of resource inequality between ethnic groups, based on rainfall on ethnic homelands during the plant-growing season. Our main da...

JEP Recommendations for Further Reading

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Readings useful to teachers, as well as other articles that are of broader cultural interest.

Previous Data and Code Availability Policy (February 2024 - February 2026)

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Previous AEA Data and Code Availability Policies

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Data and Code Availability Policy

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It is the policy of the American Economic Association to publish papers only if the data and code used in the analysis are clearly and precisely documented and access to the data and code is non-exclusive to the authors.

The Effect of Low-Skill Immigration Restrictions On U.S. Firms and Workers: Evidence from a Randomized Lottery

By Michael A. Clemens and Ethan G. Lewis

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

U.S. firms hiring foreign workers in low-skill nonfarm jobs face a binding quota on the ‘H- 2B’ visa, allocated in part through a randomized lottery. We evaluate the quota’s marginal impact using the lottery, a novel firm survey, and a pre-analysi...