The Effects of Sin Taxes and Advertising Restrictions in a Dynamic Equilibrium

By Rossi Abi-Rafeh, Pierre Dubois, Rachel Griffith, and Martin O'Connell

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2026

We develop a dynamic equilibrium model of firm competition to analyze the effects of counterfactual policies, such as taxes and advertising restrictions, on pricing, advertising, consumption, and welfare. Using micro-level data, we estimate how consumer e...

The Economics of Discriminatory Job Reservations

By James P. Choy

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2026

A society reserves certain jobs for members of a politically dominant social group to maximize the wages of workers in that group. Through an appropriate choice of reserved jobs, the dominant group chooses both the size of the set of reserved jobs and the...

Data Linkages and Privacy Regulation

By Rossella Argenziano and Alessandro Bonatti

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2026

We assess the efficacy of privacy regulation when consumers are privacy conscious. We develop a model of data linkages where a consumer interacts sequentially with two firms: One firm collects data on consumer behavior, and the other firm leverages the da...

Rational Misspecification: Framework and Applications

By Ran Eilat and Kfir Eliaz

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2026

This paper proposes a framework for assessing whether misspecified decision-makers would be willing to pay for information that can potentially make them less misspecified. We introduce a prior-free approach, based on "constrained" maximal regret, to deri...

Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

Rainfall Inequality, Political Power, and Ethnic Conflict in Africa

By Andrea Guariso and Thorsten Rogall

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

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 in ethnic homelands during the plant-growing season. Our main datas...

The Welfare Effects of Eligibility Expansions: Theory and Evidence from SNAP

By Jenna Anders and Charlie Rafkin

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

We study how eligibility expansions in the US Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) affect take-up among previously eligible households and social welfare. Using an event study with administrative take-up data, we document a "woodwork effect": ...

When the Effects of Informational Interventions Are Driven by Salience—Evidence from School Parents in Brazil

By Guilherme Lichand, Nina Cunha, Ricardo A. Madeira, and Eric Bettinger

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

Do informational interventions work because they lead subjects to merely update beliefs in the right direction or, to a large extent, because they increase the salience of the decision they target? We randomly assign parents to either an information group...

Hurricanes, Climate Change Policies, and Electoral Accountability

By Stefano Gagliarducci, M. Daniele Paserman, and Eleonora Patacchini

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

This paper studies the conditions under which legislators promote policies that may be unpopular in the short term but yield long-term benefits. Using data on the universe of federal disaster declarations from 1989 to 2020, we document that representative...

The Value of School Social Climate Information: Evidence from Chicago Housing Transactions

By Rene A. Crespin

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

Educational institutions increasingly measure and publish indicators of social climate. I exploit a plausibly exogenous shock of Chicago school information to examine how social climate information is capitalized into housing markets and affects homebuyer...

Collective Bargaining Rights, Policing, and Civilian Deaths

By Jamein P. Cunningham and Rob Gillezeau

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

Using an event-study design, we examine whether states' introduction of duty-to-bargain requirements for police unions led to meaningful changes in civilians killed by law enforcement. We find that the introduction of collective bargaining rights signific...

Flood Risk Mapping and the Distributional Impacts of Climate Information

By Joakim A. Weill

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

This paper examines the provision of official flood risk information in the United States and its distributional impacts on residential flood insurance take-up. Assembling all flood maps produced after Hurricane Katrina, I document that updated maps decre...

The Option Value of Municipal Liquidity

By Andrew Haughwout, Benjamin Hyman, and Or Shachar

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

States and localities are relied upon to implement macroeconomic stabilization policies and ensure service delivery in times of crisis. In April 2020, the introduction of the Municipal Liquidity Facility (MLF) added an emergency lending instrument to the ...

Perils of the Paperwork: The Impact of Information and Application Assistance on Social Benefit Take-Up in India

By Sarika Gupta

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

Governments worldwide administer social programs for vulnerable groups, yet many eligible citizens fail to benefit. This paper studies barriers to take-up of an unconditional cash transfer program for poor women in Delhi, India, where only one-third of el...

Tax and Occupancy of Business Properties: Evidence from UK Business Rate Reliefs

By Ben Lockwood, Martin Simmler, and Eddy H. F. Tam

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

We study how UK property tax rates impact commercial vacancies and rents, using new data and exploiting exogenous variations in two major property tax reliefs: small business relief and retail relief. We estimate that both reliefs are effective at achievi...

Attracting and Retaining Highly Effective Educators in Hard-to-Staff Schools

By Andrew Morgan, Minh Nguyen, Eric Hanushek, Ben Ost, and Steven Rivkin

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

Attracting and retaining effective teachers in high-poverty schools remains a persistent challenge. We evaluate the impact of an initiative that offered substantial performance-based compensation to highly effective teachers in the lowest-achieving school...

Alcohol, Labor, and Agriculture

By David M. A. Murphy

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

I evaluate a randomized control trial in rural Kenya in which selected households received cognitive behavioral therapy and medication to reduce alcohol abuse. At 16 months post-intervention, the program decreased the likelihood of positive spot breathaly...

Female Leaders and Intrahousehold Dynamics: Evidence from State Elections in India

By S. Anukriti, Bilge Erten, and Priya Mukherjee

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

We study the impact of women's political representation on the well-being of their female constituents, specifically in the domain of health. Increasing women's political representation leads to greater public provision of reproductive health care service...

Are Building Codes an Effective Adaptation to Wind Risk? Evidence from Remotely Detected Blue Tarps

By David Wolf and Kenji Takeuchi

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

Hurricanes cause significant wind and water damage, yet economic research primarily focuses on the latter due to data limitations. We overcome this problem by analyzing photographs taken after Hurricane Irma (2017 ) to locate blue-tarped homes. Using a re...

Racial and Ethnic Inequality and the China Shock

By Lisa B. Kahn, Lindsay Oldenski, and Geunyong Park

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2026

Minority workers tend to be disproportionately harmed by negative economic shocks. Indeed, we show that Hispanic populations experienced worse employment losses, relative to Whites, due to import competition from China largely due to lower education level...