Message from the AEA Ombuds Team at MWI

[News]

June 15, 2026

View the AEA Member Announcement from June 15, 2026.

Boundaries of the firm

[Research Highlight]

June 12, 2026

Limiting the cannibalization of existing patented products

Resetting the Innovation Clock: Endogenous Growth through Technological Turnover

By Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Timo Boppart, and Jean-Félix Brouillette

American Economic Review: Insights

We propose a model of endogenous economic growth with “weak” scale effects and diminishing returns to innovation at the micro level. In our model, entrants introduce new technologies through research and incumbents incrementally improve them throug...

Call for Papers: Hong Kong Institute for Monetary and Financial Research - 16th Workshop on Exchange Rates

[News]

June 22, 2026

The submission deadline is September 13, 2026.

Monopsony Makes It Big

By Sydnee Caldwell, Arindrajit Dube, and Suresh Naidu

Journal of Economic Literature

The literature on imperfect competition in labor markets has expanded rapidly in recent years. This article provides a guide to the field, focusing on the firm-specific (“residual”) labor supply elasticity as the definition of a firm’s labor market ...

False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 by George Selgin

By Joshua K. Hausman

Journal of Economic Literature

The effects of remote work on the disability employment gap

[Page]

A rise in work from home explains most of the postpandemic gain in full-time employment among people with physical disabilities.

Optimal Costly Oversight with Investment and Cream-Skimming

By Sumeyra Akin and Tibor Heumann

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

Transplant center oversight—conducted through costly flagging based on survival rates—is intended to improve outcomes. However, it has faced challenges because centers strategically select patients (and organs) to improve their reported outcomes. W...

Environmental market design

[Research Highlight]

June 02, 2026

Will Rafey discusses how contracts to remediate or restore Florida’s wetlands generated billions in gains from trade, but also increased total regional flood damage.

The wrong side of the tracks

[Research Highlight]

May 14, 2026

Eric Chyn discusses the effects of racial segregation on long-run economic outcomes.

Coarse Memory and Plausible Narratives

By Francesco Bilotta and Giacomo Manferdini

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

We develop a dynamic model of narrative-based political competition. Voters recall the frequency of policies and outcomes, but not their correlation. Politicians exploit such coarse memory by crafting plausible narratives that overstate their policy’...

Matching with Strategic Consistency

By Marzena Rostek and Nathan Yoder

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

In many environments, agents form agreements that have externalities or are multilateral, and may view some agreements as substitutable and others as complementary. This paper presents an approach that ensures the existence of stable outcomes in any en...

Shaping Institutions

By William Fuchs and Satoshi Fukuda

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

We propose a simple model of the evolution of institutional strength, where leaders' actions have a persistent effect by shaping the norms of the institutions they lead. This leads to different long-run behaviors even for institutions with the same form...

Campaign Connections

By Samuel Bazzi and Claudio Labanca

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

This paper explores the labor market returns to working for a victorious political campaign. Using unique administrative data from Brazil, we track campaign workers’ employment and earnings before and after close mayoral elections over nearly 20 years...

Sovereign Debt Restructuring and Reduction in Debt-to-GDP Ratio

By Sakai Ando, Tamon Asonuma, Prachi Mishra, and Alexandre Sollaci

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

How do sovereign debt restructurings affect debt-to-GDP ratios? We explore this empirically using a comprehensive dataset covering 115 countries over 1950–2021. After addressing selection bias through an Augmented Inverse Probability Weighted estimator,...

General Equilibrium Effects in Space: Theory and Measurement

By Rodrigo Adão, Costas Arkolakis, and Federico Esposito

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

We examine the general-equilibrium effect of the China shock on US regions. We demonstrate that spatial linkages intensify the shock’s negative impact on employment across regions, leading to differential effects that are substantially larger than predi...

Today’s Ombuds Drop-In Hour and Recognition for Team Member Dr. Brent Epperson

[News]

June 23, 2026

View the AEA Member Announcement from June 24, 2026.

Comment on “Development Effects of Electrification: Evidence from the Topographic Placement of Hydropower Plants in Brazil”

By Jörg Ankel-Peters, Gunther Bensch, and Colin Vance

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

Lipscomb, Mobarak, and Barham (2013) document large positive effects of electrification in Brazil due to broad-based improvements in labor productivity. They instrument electrification by simulating a hypothetical power grid roll-out driven solely by ge...

On the Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks on Income and Consumption Heterogeneity

By Minsu Chang and Frank Schorfheide

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

We use the functional autoregressive framework of Chang, Chen, and Schorfheide (2024) to examine the effects of monetary policy shocks on the cross-sectional distributions of U.S. earnings, consumption, and financial income. An expansionary shock reduces ...

Time-Varying Cost of Distancing: Distancing Fatigue and Lockdowns

By Christoph Carnehl, Satoshi Fukuda, and Nenad Kos

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

We study a behavioral SIR model with time-varying costs of distancing. We explore the consequences of distancing fatigue and public policies. For a second wave to arise, a steep increase in distancing cost is necessary. We introduce prudent distancing ...