Beyond the Campus: Indirect Effects of University Openings in Uganda

By Tess Lallemant and Brian Dillon

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Over the last two decades, the number of higher education institutions in low- and middle-income countries has grown rapidly. In this paper we study how the opening of a university affects employment and education outcomes in small cities across Uganda. W...

The Leaky College Pipeline: Evidence from Administrative Data in Uganda

By Isaac Ahimbisibwe, Adrien Dautheville, Lenka Fiala, Saint Kizito Omala, and Wayne Aaron Sandholtz

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

We use linked administrative data from Uganda to track student progression from primary school through university scholarship admission, documenting large leaks in the education pipeline at every stage. Many high-performing students from poorer districts ...

The Adoption of Industrial AI in America

By Kristina McElheran, Mu-Jeung Yang, Zachary Kroff, and Erik Brynjolfsson

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Using a mandatory, purpose-designed Census Bureau survey of approximately 28,500 establishments, we provide new evidence on industrial AI adoption in US manufacturing. Despite widespread digitization, only 22.8 percent of plants report any AI use as of 20...

Generative AI: What Type of Technology?

By Martin Neil Baily, David M. Byrne, Aidan T. Kane, and Paul E. Soto

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

The economic effects of generative AI (genAI) will depend on the type of technology it ultimately represents. The impact on productivity growth of discrete innovations, such as the lightbulb, fades when the market saturates. General-purpose technologies (...

Aggregate Productivity Gains from Artificial Intelligence: A Sectoral Perspective

By Francesco Filippucci, Peter Gal, and Matthias Schief

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Artificial intelligence raises productivity in specific tasks, but its aggregate impact remains debated. We project productivity gains from AI for 65 US industries and aggregate them in a multisector general-equilibrium framework, showing that AI could co...

AI as an Innovation in the Method of Innovation: Implications for Productivity Growth

By Filippo Bontadini, Carol Corrado, Jonathan Haskel, and Cecilia Jona-Lasinio

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

This paper estimates AI’s impact on labor productivity growth, treating AI as both a general-purpose technology and an innovation in the method of innovation. Using a framework that separates upstream innovation from downstream (other) production sugges...

American Investment in Chinese Renminbi

By Bruno Cavani, Christopher Clayton, Amanda Dos Santos, Matteo Maggiori, and Jesse Schreger

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

This paper uses microdata on US mutual fund and ETF portfolios from SEC Form N-PORT to study American investment in Chinese Renminbi (RMB)–denominated bonds. We show that, even as total foreign holdings of Chinese bonds rebounded in 2024, US holdings of...

Global Trade, Tariff Uncertainty, and the US Dollar

By Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan, Can Soylu, and Muhammed A. Yıldırım

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

We analyze how tariff uncertainty affects exchange rates, motivated by the US dollar’s depreciation after the 2025 tariff announcements. Standard macrotrade models predict that unilateral tariffs appreciate the implementing country’s currency, but we ...

Stablecoins and the Dollar: Historical Parallels and Future Risks

By Max Harris and Kenneth Rogoff

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Stablecoins have burst onto the scene, offering the potential for cheaper, faster, and smarter payments—perhaps even strengthened dollar dominance. Yet, for all the novel technology, stablecoins present a host of age-old risks that caution against such ...

The Mysterious Disappearance of Productivity Growth in US Manufacturing: Was It the China Shock?

By Robert J. Gordon and Kenneth Ryu

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

After registering a 3 percent annual rate from 1948 to 2010, the growth of labor productivity in US manufacturing since 2010 has come to a cold stop, with a zero 2010–2025 annual growth rate. What caused the disappearance of productivity growth in the c...

Quality Adjustment in Industry Deflators Strengthens Estimated Innovation-Productivity Relationships

By Enghin Atalay, Ali Hortaçsu, Nicole Kimmel, and Chad Syverson

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

This article studies how industry innovation translates into subsequent productivity growth. It reviews a method that uses gaps between consumer- and producer-facing price indices to estimate mismeasurement in industry TFP growth. Measured productivity gr...

Markups and the Manufacturing Productivity Slowdown

By Benjamin Bridgman

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

This paper examines whether mismeasurement due to markups is responsible for the decline in US manufacturing productivity growth. It estimates markups using a model to estimate the user cost of capital to split capital payments into regular returns and ec...

The Productivity Paradox in US Manufacturing: A Firm- and Industry-Level Perspective

By Danial Lashkari and Jeremy Pearce

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

US manufacturing productivity growth grew rapidly in the 1987–2007 period but has been nearly zero since 2010. We decompose this productivity slowdown across industries and firms and find it to be pervasive. More specifically, it appears in the initiall...

Employment Preferences of Favela Residents

By Mayara Felix, Beatriz Marcoje, Ieda Matavelli, and Maria Clara Rodrigues

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

We document employment preferences of workers at the margin of informality using open-ended questions and discrete choice experiments in Brazil's largest favela complex. Stated preferences emphasize pay and tangible job attributes rather than meaning or p...

When Outsiders Become Insiders: Beliefs and the Persistence of Exclusionary Norms

By Luisa Cefalà, Franck Irakoze, Pedro Naso, and Nicholas Swanson

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Do exclusionary norms unravel as outsiders become insiders? Using a randomized trial in Burundian labor markets generating exogenous skill acquisition, we find incumbent insiders' attitudes remain largely stable while newly skilled workers rapidly adopt e...

Gatekeepers of Disparities: Variation in Prosecutors’ Effects on Racial Gaps in Incarceration

By Emma Harrington and Hannah Shaffer

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Prosecutors serve as gatekeepers between arrest and sentencing, giving them influence over how racial disparities evolve through the criminal justice system. Using the quasi-random assignment of cases within North Carolina prosecutor offices, we estimate ...

Stop and Frisk around the Country

By David S. Abrams and Priyanka Goonetilleke

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

This project assembles over eight million pedestrian- and vehicle-stop records from 16 major US cities to provide the first large-scale analysis of stop-and-frisk policing practices. We document striking cross-city variation—nearly two orders of magnitu...

Reform Prosecutors and the Footprint of the Criminal Justice System

By Amanda Agan, Jennifer L. Doleac, Anna Harvey, Anna Kyriazis, and Lauren Schechter

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Elected prosecutors exercise substantial discretion over criminal charges and case dispositions, shaping the footprint of the criminal justice system. We study how the election of reform-minded prosecutors affects charging and conviction outcomes using va...

Hormone Therapy Is Associated with Decreased Risk of Running Away among Transgender Adolescents

By Travis Campbell and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

This paper uses the 2015 US Transgender Survey to estimate the association between gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) initiation and the risk of running away among transgender adolescents during the first year of treatment. Our event study approach c...

Men’s Classified Ads and Risky Health Behaviors

By Hasan Shahid

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Risky health behaviors are private and rarely observed. This paper introduces a novel dataset of over 170,000 men’s classified advertisements published between 1975 and 1992 in The Advocate, the largest and longest-running national LGBT magazine ...