Deterring Industrial Vessels from African Coastal Fisheries

By Aishwarya Agarwal and Gabriel Englander

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Can African countries deter industrial fishing vessels from near-shore waters reserved for artisanal fishers? Using radar data released in 2024, this paper provides the first causal evaluation of these Inshore Exclusion Zones (IEZs). Regression disconti...

Non-Tariff Barriers in the U.S.-China Trade War

By Tuo Chen, Chang-Tai Hsieh, and Zheng (Michael) Song

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

Unofficial non-tariff barriers were responsible for 50% of the reduction in Chinese imports from the U.S. during the 2018-2019 trade war. We infer NTBs from the change in imports of U.S. products relative to imports from other countries of the same HS6 pr...

Endogenous Tracking: Sorting and Peer Effects

By Aleksei Chernulich, Romain Gauriot, and Daehong Min

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

Can an educational system without ability tracking and signalling motive generate self-sorting of students by ability? We build a theoretical model to show that when seeking positive peer effects is combined with costly educational choices, even in the...

Markets, Contracts, and Hierarchies: How Bargaining Frictions Affect Governance

By Tore Ellingsen and Topi Miettinen

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

We develop an organizational governance model with a single buyer and endogenous upstream entry. Investments and control rights over assets and actions are immediately contractable; production is contractable after uncertainty resolves. We show the fol...

Behavioral Biases are Temporally Stable

By Victor Stango and Jonathan Zinman

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

Social scientists often consider temporal stability when assessing a construct and its measures, but whether behavioral biases display such stability is relatively unknown. We estimate stability for 17 biases, using lab-style elicitations in online surv...

The effect of prison sentences on financial crime

[Research Highlight]

May 21, 2026

Evidence from Finland suggests that incarceration for fraud defendants reduces recidivism and discourages misconduct among defendants’ colleagues.

Different Paths to College Success: The Impact of Massachusetts's Charter Schools on College Trajectories

By Sarah R. Cohodes and Astrid C. Pineda

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

The charter school movement encompasses many school models. In Massachusetts in the 2010s, the site of our study, urban charter schools primarily used "No Excuses" practices, whereas nonurban charters had greater model variety. Using randomized admissions...

Work from Home and Disability Employment

By Nicholas Bloom, Gordon B. Dahl, and Dan-Olof Rooth

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

There has been a dramatic rise in disability employment since the pandemic, while work from home (WFH) has risen fourfold. This paper asks whether the two are causally related. Controlling for compositional changes and labor market tightness, a 1 percenta...

Long Wars

By Sandeep Baliga and Tomas Sjöström

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

We study whether the Coase conjecture holds for bargaining during war. Two players, A and B, contest a divisible resource until one side collapses or agreement is reached. If player B is militarily strong, then he insists on getting a large share. However...

Taxing the Wealth of the Poor: Evidence from the Danish Old-Age Support Asset Test

By Niels Johannesen, Johan Sæverud, and Emmanuel Saez

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

We document strong behavioral responses to an asset test for an old-age support program in Denmark using comprehensive administrative data. We show that the density distribution of the liquid assets targeted by the test exhibits large but diffuse excess m...

An Evolutionary Perspective on Updating Risk and Ambiguity Preferences

By Philipp Sadowski and Todd Sarver

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

Using an evolutionary approach, we address the prominent tension in the literature that updating of ambiguity and nonexpected-utility preferences cannot, in general, be both dynamically consistent and consequentialist. Perhaps not surprisingly, evolutiona...

The Impact of Unions on the Wage Distribution: Evidence from Higher Education

By Michael Baker, Yosh Halberstam, Kory Kroft, Alexandre Mas, and Derek Messacar

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

We estimate the impact of unionization on the wage distribution of Canadian university faculty using longitudinal administrative data on salaries and exploiting the staggered rollout of unionization across institutions. We find that unionization compresse...

Survivors' Mental Health and the Protective Role of Income Stability

By Itzik Fadlon, Astrid Sophie Fugleholm, and Torben Heien Nielsen

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

We use administrative records on the universe of Danish households to characterize survivors' mental health following their spouse's death. We provide visually clear evidence for the immediate, large, and lingering adverse impacts and focus on studying th...

Breaking Bad News

By Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn ⓡ Simon Board

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

We study how information disclosure shapes social learning about a potentially harmful product. Increased transparency helps early agents avoid harm, which may undermine learning by later agents. Despite this conflict of interest, we show that full transp...

Front Matter

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

Universal Academic Questionnaire (UAQ)

[Page]

The AEA's annual survey of academic departments, faculty positions, and salaries.

Report of Independent Auditor

American Economic Review, June 2026

Front Matter

American Economic Review, June 2026

Identifying Preference for Early Resolution from Asset Prices

By Hengjie Ai, Ravi Bansal, Hongye Guo, and Amir Yaron

American Economic Review, June 2026

This paper develops an asset market-based test for preference for the timing of resolution of uncertainty. Our main theorem provides a characterization of preference for early resolution of uncertainty in terms of the risk premium realized during the peri...

Mergers, Foreign Competition, and Jobs: Evidence from the US Appliance Industry

By Felix Montag

American Economic Review, June 2026

Policy choices often create trade-offs between workers and consumers. I examine how foreign competition alters the consumer welfare and domestic employment effects of mergers. I construct a model incorporating consumer demand, endogenous product portfolio...