Difference-in-Differences with a Continuous Treatment

By Brantly Callaway, Andrew Goodman-Bacon, and Pedro H. C. Sant'Anna

American Economic Review

This paper analyzes difference-in-differences designs with a continuous treatment. We show that treatment-on-the-treated-type parameters are identified under a parallel trends assumption analogous to the binary treatment case. However, comparing these p...

Micro and Macro Perspectives on Production-Based Markups

By John Fernald, Amit Gandhi, Dimitrije Ruzic, and James Traina

Journal of Economic Literature

We review the “production approach” to estimating markups, the ratio of price to marginal cost. The approach is scalable. It requires no model of consumer demand or market structure and applies broadly across firms, industries, and time. We organize o...

Other Officers and Administrators

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Devolving power to local governments

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Greater political autonomy yielded lasting economic gains in Brazilian communities.

Decentralizing Development: The Economic Impacts of Government Splits

By Ricardo Dahis and Christiane Szerman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2026

Changes in political boundaries aimed at devolving power to local governments are common across many countries. We examine the economic impacts of government unit creation through splitting. Exploiting reforms that led to sharp increases in the number of ...

Generalized Double Auctions: Maximizing Welfare Guarantees in Bilateral Trade

By Wanchang Zhang

American Economic Review

This paper studies robust mechanism design in bilateral trade under limited information. I introduce a new class of mechanisms in which the buyer and seller submit a bid and an ask, and trade occurs when the bid–ask difference exceeds a random spread ...

Monetary Economics and Policy: A Foundation for Modern Currency Systems by Pierpaolo Benigno

By Jordi Galí

Journal of Economic Literature

AEASP: Participants

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Great Layoff, Great Retirement and Post-pandemic Inflation

By Guido Ascari, Jakob Grazzini, and Domenico Massaro

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

This paper examines how pandemic-induced layoffs contributed to post-Covid-19 inflation through their effects on retirement and labor supply. Using CPS microdata, we show that the unprecedented “Great Layoff” triggered a sharp rise in early retirem...

Myths, Morals, and Movies

By Stelios Michalopoulos and Christopher Rauh

American Economic Review

Why are certain movies more successful in some markets than others? Are the entertainment products we consume reflective of our core beliefs? To answer these questions, we analyze international movie data and local tales using machine learning to measu...

Winning the visa lottery

[Research Highlight]

August 12, 2026

Evidence from a US government lottery shows that restricting foreign low-skill workers shrinks businesses without creating jobs for Americans.

The Effect of Low-Skill Immigration Restrictions on US Firms and Workers: Evidence from a Randomized Lottery

By Michael A. Clemens and Ethan G. Lewis

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2026

US 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-analysis plan. Fir...

Annual Elections and Other Announcements

[News]

August 13, 2026

View the AEA Member Announcement from August 14, 2026.

Best Practices for Economists

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Best Practices for Economists

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Patient Costs and Physicians’ Information

By Michael J. Dickstein, Jihye Jeon, and Eduardo Morales

American Economic Review

Health plans in the U.S. increasingly use cost-sharing to steer demand for prescription drugs. However, the effectiveness of these incentives depends both on physicians’ price sensitivity and their knowledge of patient costs. We employ a moment inequ...

Does Increasing Financial Access to Contraception in the U.S. Reduce Unintended Pregnancies? Evidence from the M-CARES Randomized Controlled Trial at Two Years

By Martha J. Bailey, Emilia Brito, Deniz Gorgulu, Kelsey Figone, Vanessa Wanner Lang, Alexa Prettyman, and Vanessa K. Dalton

American Economic Review: Insights

We use a randomized controlled trial to examine how out-of-pocket costs affect contraceptive method choice, pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth among uninsured U.S. women. The study recruited women seeking care through Title X—a national family plann...

Group Consulting Continues to Benefit Firms after a Decade: Experimental Evidence from Colombian Auto Parts Firms

By Leonardo Iacovone, David McKenzie, and William Maloney

American Economic Review: Insights

We revisit a randomized experiment that demonstrated the cost-effectiveness of group-based, compared to individual, consulting services for firms in the Colombian auto parts industry using administrative data that now permits following firms for up to a d...

Social Defaults and Plan Choice: The Case of Spousal Following

By Tal Gross, Tim Layton, Daniel Prinz, and Julia Yates

American Economic Review: Insights

We study how couples in the Medicare Part D program choose an insurance plan. Over 70 percent of enrollees choose the same plan as their spouse. Even among those with differing healthcare needs, well over half do so. Discrete-choice models suggest benef...

Professional Development Resources

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