Why are some schools surprisingly good at producing star math students?

[Research Highlight]

May 31, 2016

Understanding the source of high math achievement

Is it too hard for cities to get denser?

[Research Highlight]

August 11, 2016

Measuring the holdout problem in Los Angeles County

Can international exam rankings tell us how to improve American education?

[Research Highlight]

September 12, 2016

Interpreting cross-country differences can be difficult – and illuminating

You owe me

[Research Highlight]

January 27, 2017

Does it matter if doctors or lawmakers accept small gifts from people trying to influence them?

Can a nearby SAT test center boost college attendance?

[Research Highlight]

March 26, 2016

More evidence that nudges can make a huge difference for students on the cusp of applying to college

Is digital "dark matter" skewing our GDP statistics?

[Research Highlight]

May 02, 2017

Examining the mismeasurement hypothesis

How the Great Fire of 1872 helped Boston grow

[Research Highlight]

May 24, 2017

The upside of an urban disaster

The Economist's Lament: Public Assistance in America

[Symposium: Welfare and Workfare]

By Gary Burtless

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1990

This survey will provide a brief summary of the main features of the U.S. welfare system together with an assessment of some major criticisms of it. I will discuss major reforms proposed by economists and consider some recent evidence about the behavioral...

Is It Whom You Know or What You Know? An Empirical Assessment of the Lobbying Process

By Marianne Bertrand, Matilde Bombardini, and Francesco Trebbi

American Economic Review, December 2014

Do lobbyists provide issue-specific information to members of Congress? Or do they provide special interests access to politicians? We present evidence to assess the role of issue expertise versus connections in the US Federal lobbying process and illus...

The Effect of Access to College Assessments on Enrollment and Attainment

By George Bulman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2015

This paper examines if students' college outcomes are sensitive to access to college admissions tests. I construct a dataset of every test center location and district policy in the United States linked to the universe of individual testing records and...

A Search and Matching Approach to Labor Markets: Did the Natural Rate of Unemployment Rise?

[Symposium: Labor Markets and Unemployment]

By Mary C. Daly, Bart Hobijn, Ayşegül Şahin, and Robert G. Valletta

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2012

The U.S. unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high since the 2007-2009 recession, leading some observers to conclude that structural rather than cyclical factors are to blame. Relying on a standard job search and matching framework and empirical evid...

A Quantitative Review of Marriage Markets: How Inequality Is Remaking the American Family by Carbone and Cahn

By Kirsten Cornelson and Aloysius Siow

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2016

June Carbone and Naomi Cahn argue that growing earnings inequality and the increased educational attainment of women, relative to men, have led to declining marriage rates for less-educated women and an increase in positive assortative matching since the ...

A Randomized Assessment of Online Learning

By William T. Alpert, Kenneth A. Couch, and Oskar R. Harmon

American Economic Review, May 2016

A microeconomics principles course employing random assignment across three sections with different teaching models is used to explore learning outcomes as measured by a cumulative final exam for students who participate in traditional face-to-face classr...

Education and the Age Profile of Literacy into Adulthood

[Symposium: Investment in Children]

By Elizabeth Cascio, Damon Clark, and Nora Gordon

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2008

American teenagers perform considerably worse on international assessments of achievement than do teenagers in other high-income countries. This observation has been a source of great concern since the first international tests were administered in the 19...

The Need for Accountability in Education in Developing Countries

[Symposium: Schools and Accountability]

By Isaac M. Mbiti

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2016

Despite the rapid growth in enrollment rates across the developing world, there are major concerns about the quality of education that children receive. Across numerous developing countries, recent learning assessments have revealed that children are not ...

The Pragmatist's Guide to Comparative Effectiveness Research

[Symposium: Constraining Healthcare Costs]

By Amitabh Chandra, Anupam B. Jena, and Jonathan S. Skinner

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2011

Following an acrimonious healthcare reform debate involving charges of "death panels," in 2010, Congress explicitly forbade the use of cost-effectiveness analysis in government programs of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In this context, ...

The Reform of Federal Deposit Insurance

[Symposium: Federal Deposit Insurance]

By Lawrence J. White

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1989

In early 1989, the system of deposit insurance in the United States was in crisis. The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC), the U.S. government agency that provided deposit insurance for savings and loan (thrift) institutions, had susta...

A Reassessment of the Relationship between Inequality and Growth

By Kristin J. Forbes

American Economic Review, September 2000

This paper challenges the current belief that income inequality has a negative relationship with economic growth. It uses an improved data set on income inequality, which not only reduces measurement error, but also allows estimation via a panel technique...

Racial Discrimination in Grading: Evidence from Brazil

By Fernando Botelho, Ricardo A. Madeira, and Marcos A. Rangel

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2015

We investigate whether racial discrimination in the form of biased assessment of students is prevalent within Brazilian schools. Evidence is drawn from unique administrative data pertaining to eighth-grade students and educators. Holding constant perfo...

Globalization and Growth

By Gene M. Grossman and Elhanan Helpman

American Economic Review, May 2015

How does globalization affect economic growth? We discuss mechanisms that link international integration to the incentives for knowledge accumulation and the efficacy of that process. First, integration facilitates the flow of knowledge across national bo...