Correlation Neglect in Student-to-School Matching

By Alex Rees-Jones, Ran Shorrer, and Chloe Tergiman

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2024

We present results from three experiments containing incentivized school choice scenarios. In these scenarios, we vary whether schools' assessments of students are based on a common priority (inducing correlation in admissions decisions) or are based on i...

Valuing Identity in the Classroom: What Economics Can Learn from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education

[Symposium: Expanding the Appeal of Economics]

By Sergio Barrera, Susan Sajadi, Marionette Holmes, and Sarah Jacobson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2024

Economics faces stubborn underrepresentation of minoritized identity groups. Economics instructors also largely use antiquated instructional methods. We leverage the literature from the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics educati...

Mental health reform in Brazil

[Research Highlight]

October 07, 2024

The effects of deinstitutionalization.

Algorithmic Risk Assessment in the Hands of Humans

By Megan T. Stevenson and Jennifer L. Doleac

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2024

We evaluate the impacts of adopting algorithmic risk assessments in sentencing. We find that judges changed sentencing practices in response to the risk assessment, but that discretion played a large role in mediating its impact. Judges deviated from the ...

Fighting Poverty One Family at a Time: Experimental Evidence from an Intervention with Holistic, Individualized, Wraparound Services

By William N. Evans, Shawna Kolka, James X. Sullivan, and Patrick S. Turner

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2025

Families in poverty face numerous barriers to establishing stable economic footing. This paper estimates experimental effects of a holistic, individualized wraparound service intervention for low-income individuals. The intervention includes a detailed as...

Structural Reforms and Economic Performance: The Experience of Advanced Economies

By Nauro F. Campos, Paul De Grauwe, and Yuemei Ji

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2025

This article provides a comprehensive assessment of the theoretical and empirical literature on structural reforms in advanced economies. Structural reforms matter because they entail profound and systematic changes that affect economic welfare, productiv...

Data Engineering for Cognitive Economics

By Andrew Caplin

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2025

Cognitive economics studies imperfect information and decision-making mistakes. A central scientific challenge is that these can't be identified in standard choice data. Overcoming this challenge calls for data engineering, in which new data forms are int...

A Learning Model of Financial Instability

By Noah Williams

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

I develop an adaptive learning model where periods of stability lead to periods of instability, similar to Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis. In tranquil times, investors increase their subjective risk-return assessments. They buy more stocks...

Competition and Defaults in Online Search

By Francesco Decarolis, Muxin Li, and Filippo Paternollo

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2025

This paper offers the first systematic quantitative assessment of default-option interventions designed to mitigate Google's search dominance. By analyzing interventions in the European Economic Area (EEA), Russia, and Turkey, we find that across all thre...

China’s Nationwide CO2 Emissions Trading System: A General Equilibrium Assessment

By Lawrence H. Goulder, Xianling Long, Chenfei Qu, and Da Zhang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

China’s CO2 emissions trading system, the world’s largest, aims to significantly reduce CO2 emissions. The system is a tradable performance standard (TPS), differing from cap and trade (C&T). We provide a dynamic general equilibrium assessment that un...

Does the "Boost for Mathematics" Boost Mathematics? A Large-Scale Evaluation of the "Lesson Study" Methodology on Student Performance

By Erik Grönqvist, Björn Öckert, and Olof Rosenqvist

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2025

Students in East Asian countries dominate international assessments. One possible explanation for their success is the use of "Lesson study" to enhance teaching practices; a collaborative process where teachers plan, observe, and analyze a lesson together...

Graduate school and mental health

[Research Highlight]

February 15, 2023

Valentin Bolotnyy discusses the state of student mental health in eight top-ranked economics programs.

School choice troubles

[Research Highlight]

March 23, 2022

Why did Taiwan’s school assignment system lead to nationwide protests?

Comparing Experimental and Nonexperimental Methods: What Lessons Have We Learned Four Decades after LaLonde (1986)?

By Guido W. Imbens and Yiqing Xu

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2025

In 1986, Robert LaLonde published an article comparing nonexperimental estimates to experimental benchmarks (LaLonde 1986). He concluded that the nonexperimental methods at the time could not systematically replicate experimental benchmarks, casting doubt...

Industrial Policy, Asian Miracle Style

[Symposium: The East Asian Tigers]

By Reda Cherif and Fuad Hasanov

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2025

We decipher the riddle of the meteoric rise of the Asian Miracles—Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, and Japan before them—in the second half of the twentieth century. We argue that the secret of their success lies in the specific type of industr...

First-Generation Elite: The Role of School Social Networks

By Sarah Cattan, Kjell G. Salvanes, and Emma Tominey

American Economic Review, December 2025

High school students from non-elite backgrounds are less likely to have peers with elite-educated parents than their elite counterparts. This difference in social capital is a key driver of the high intergenerational persistence in elite education. We ide...

"Potential" and the Gender Promotion Gap

By Alan Benson, Danielle Li, and Kelly Shue

American Economic Review, February 2026

We show that subjective assessments of employee "potential" contribute to gender gaps in promotion and pay. Using data on 29,809 management-track employees from a large retail chain, we find that women receive substantially lower potential ratings despite...

Land Concentration and Long-Run Development in the Frontier United States

By Cory Smith

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2026

I study the long-run economic effects of land concentration on the American frontier. Using quasi-random variation in initial land allocations from a checkerboard formula, I analyze a large database of property assessments and find that historical concent...

Are we in a "golden age" for entertainment?

[Research Highlight]

September 19, 2017

The AEA interviews Joel Waldfogel about the quality of books, music, movies, and television produced in the digital age.

Starting early

[Research Highlight]

May 28, 2019

What are the effects of enrolling younger children in a pre-K program?