We develop a new methodology to estimate subjective beliefs from hypothetical choice data. Our identification approach is based on the novel insight that by varying the amount of information on future realizations of stochastic variables, discrete choice experiments can identify not only preferences, but also subjective beliefs. We formally prove this result in a general setting and apply it to design

Moral Foundations Theory is an influential empirical description of moral perception. According to this theory, individuals make moral judgments based on five distinct “moral foundations:” Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity. We provide a theory that explores the claimed evolutionary basis for these moral foundations. The theory conceptualizes these five moral foundations as specific modifications

A researcher can use a tightly parameterized structural model to obtain internally consistent estimates of a wide range of economically interesting targets. We ask how reliable these estimates are when the researcher’s model may be misspecified. We focus on the case of multivariate, potentially nonlinear models where the causal variable of interest is endogenous. Reliable estimates require that the

Does family history matter for policymaking in democracies? Linking members of Congress to the census, we observe countries of birth for members, their parents, and their grandparents, allowing us to measure ancestry for the politicians in office when U.S. immigration policy changed dramatically, from closing the border in the 1920s to reshaping admittance criteria in the 1960s. We find that legislators

Low unionization rates, a falling real federal minimum wage, and outsourcing have hampered wage growth in the low-wage sector in the US for several decades. In recent years (2014-2023), a number of large private retailers – including some of the largest employers in the U.S. – have opted to institute or raise company-wide, voluntary minimum wages (VMWs) for their employees. We use anonymized payroll

We present evidence that the high estimated MPCs from the leading household studies result in implausible macroeconomic counterfactuals. Using the 2008 tax rebate as a case study, we calibrate a standard macro model with the estimated micro MPCs to construct counterfactual macroeconomic consumption paths in the absence of a rebate. The counterfactual paths imply that consumption expenditures would

This paper posits an information channel as an explanation for sudden inflations. Households saving via nominal government bonds face a choice whether to acquire costly information about future government surpluses. They trade off the cost of acquiring information about the surpluses that back bond repayment against the benefit of a more informed saving decision. Through the information channel, small

What is the impact of the real minimum wage on wages and inequality? I develop a theory that nests “The Race Between Education and Technology.” The theory predicts that the impact of changes in minimum wages is initially small but grows over time. I present empirical evidence of these dynamic effects: the elasticity of real wages grows substantially over a three-year period. I additionally show that

This paper identifies which investments in school facilities help students and which and are valued by homeowners. Using novel data on school district bonds, test scores, and house prices across 29 U.S. states and a research design based on narrowly decided elections with staggered timing, we find that increased capital spending in schools significantly improves test scores and is efficient on average

This paper studies the effects of the largest residential racial desegregation initiative in U.S. history, the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program. From the late 1970s to the 1990s, Gautreaux moved thousands of Black families into predominantly white neighborhoods to support racial and economic integration. We link historical program records to administrative data and use plausibly exogenous variation

We study the staggered introduction of a generative AI–based conversational assistant using data from 5,172 customer-support agents. Access to AI assistance increases worker productivity, as measured by issues resolved per hour, by 15% on average, with substantial heterogeneity across workers. The effects vary significantly across different agents. Less experienced and lower-skilled workers improve

This paper investigates how competition to publish first and thereby establish priority impacts the quality of scientific research. We begin by developing a model where scientists decide whether and how long to work on a given project. When deciding how long they should let their projects mature, scientists trade off the marginal benefit of higher quality research against the marginal risk of being

This paper studies the unexpected retraction of a U.S. federal policy in 2016 that would have more than doubled the “overtime exemption threshold” from ${\$}$455 to ${\$}$913 per week and thereby grant overtime protection to an additional 20 percent of salaried workers. Although the policy was blocked by a federal court injunction a week before it was supposed to take effect, I show that it nevertheless

This paper examines language patterns in US television news coverage of police killings. We first document that the media use semantic structures—such as passive voice, nominalizations, and intransitive verbs—that obscure responsibility more often in cases of police killings than in cases of civilian killings. Through an online experiment, we demonstrate the significance of these semantic differences

This paper examines the impact of denying a wanted abortion on women and children in Colombia using high-quality administrative microdata and credibly exogenous variation in abortion access. Women can seek legal abortions through a tutela, with cases randomly assigned to judges. Female judges are 20 p.p. (32%) less likely to deny abortion cases than male judges, and we use the judge’s sex as an instrument

I develop a model of the social construction of race. Racial categories emerge from labour conflict when elites privilege intrinsically irrelevant traits to divide workers against each other and extract workers’ surplus. I show that elites use colour to grant unequal rights and track these rights across generations because it is heritable, observable, and relatively immutable. Depending on the demographic

A longstanding and influential view in U.S. correctional policy is that “nothing works” when it comes to rehabilitating incarcerated individuals. We revisit this hypothesis by studying an innovative law-enforcement-led program launched in the county jail of Flint, Michigan: Inmate Growth Naturally and Intentionally Through Education (IGNITE). We develop an instrumental variable approach to estimate

We identify phrases associated with novel technologies using textual analysis of patents, job postings, and earnings calls, enabling us to identify four stylized facts on the diffusion of jobs relating to new technologies. First, the development of economically impactful new technologies is geographically highly concentrated, more so even than overall patenting: 56% of the most economically impactful

Is government guiding the invisible hand at the top of the labor market? We use new administrative data to measure physicians’ earnings and estimate the influence of healthcare policies on these earnings, physicians’ labor supply, and allocation of talent. Combining the administrative registry of U.S. physicians with tax data, Medicare billing records, and survey responses, we find that physicians’

We estimate productivity growth in England from 1250 to 1870. Real wages over this period were heavily influenced by plague-induced swings in the population. Our estimates account for these Malthusian dynamics. We find that productivity growth was zero prior to 1600. Productivity growth began in 1600—almost a century before the Glorious Revolution. Thus, the onset of productivity growth preceded the

Two in five Americans have medical debt, nearly half of whom owe at least $2,500. Concerned by this burden, governments and private donors have undertaken large, high-profile efforts to relieve medical debt. We partnered with RIP Medical Debt (now Undue Medical Debt) to conduct two randomized experiments that relieved medical debt with a face value of $169 million for 83,401 people between 2018 and

While there is a vast (and mixed) literature on gender differences in social preferences, little is known about believed gender differences in social preferences. Using data from 15 studies and 8,979 individuals, we find that women are believed to be more generous and more equality-oriented than men. This believed gender gap is robust across a wide range of contexts that vary in terms of strategic

Schooling may build human capital not only by teaching academic skills, but by expanding the capacity for cognition itself. We focus specifically on cognitive endurance: the ability to sustain effortful mental activity over a continuous stretch of time. As motivation, we document that globally and in the US, the poor exhibit cognitive fatigue more quickly than the rich across field settings; they also

From a new data set, we infer time series of term structures of yields on U.S. federal bonds during the gold standard era from 1791–1933 and use our estimates to reassess historical narratives about how the United States expanded its fiscal capacity. We show that U.S. debt carried a default risk premium until the end of the nineteenth century, when it started being priced as an alternative safe asset

How does inventors’ migration affect international talent allocation, knowledge diffusion, and productivity growth? To answer this question, I build a novel two-country innovation-led endogenous growth model, where heterogeneous inventors produce innovations, learn from others, and make dynamic migration and return decisions. Migrants interact with individuals at origin and destination, diffusing knowledge

The primary motivation behind quantitative work in international trade and many other fields is to shed light on the economic consequences of policy changes and other shocks. To help assess and potentially strengthen the credibility of such quantitative predictions we introduce an IV-based goodness-of-fit measure that provides the basis for testing causal predictions in arbitrary general-equilibrium

We estimate a matching model of teachers and elementary schools with rich data on teachers' applications and principals' ratings from a large, urban district in North Carolina. Both teachers’ and principals’ preferences deviate from those that would maximize the achievement of economically disadvantaged students: teachers prefer schools with fewer disadvantaged students, and principals' ratings are

Workers who are worried about their personal finances may find it hard to focus at work. If so, reducing financial concerns could increase productivity. We test this hypothesis in a sample of low-income Indian piece-rate manufacturing workers. We stagger when wages are paid out: some workers are paid earlier and receive a cash infusion while others remain liquidity constrained. The cash infusion leads

What causes adverse policing outcomes, such as excessive uses of force and unnecessary arrests? Prevailing explanations focus on problematic officers or deficient regulations and oversight. We introduce an overlooked perspective. We suggest that the cognitive demands inherent in policing can undermine officer decision making. Unless officers are prepared for these demands, they may jump to conclusions

We estimate the returns to IRS audits of taxpayers across the income distribution. We find an additional $1 spent auditing taxpayers above the 90th income percentile yields more than $12 in revenue, while audits of below-median income taxpayers yield $5. We construct our estimates by drawing from comprehensive internal accounting information and audit-level enforcement logs. We begin by estimating

From 1944 to 1952, largely agrarian Finland had to export, on average, 4% of its yearly GDP in industrial products to the Soviet Union as war reparations. To meet the reparation demands, the Finnish state needed to provide extensive temporary support to Soviet-assigned industries with insufficient production capacity. This article documents the long-term effects of this extensive and temporary industrial

We show that the likelihood of a liquidity crunch in wholesale U.S. dollar funding markets depends on levels of reserve balances at the financial institutions that are the most active intermediaries of these markets. Heightened risk of an imminent liquidity crunch is signaled by significant delays in intraday payments to these large financial institutions over the prior two weeks. Our study contributes

We assess the impact of discrimination on Black individuals’ job networks across the United States using a two-stage field experiment with 400+ fictitious LinkedIn profiles. In the first stage, we vary race via AI-generated images only and find that Black profiles’ connection requests are 13% less likely to be accepted. Based on users’ CVs, we find widespread discrimination across social groups. In

Satoshi Nakamoto (2008) invented a new kind of economic system that does not need the support of government or rule of law. Trust and security instead arise from a combination of cryptography and economic incentives, all in a completely anonymous and decentralized system. This article shows that Nakamoto’s novel form of trust, while undeniably ingenious, is deeply economically limited. The core argument

When people receive new information, sometimes they revise their beliefs too much, and sometimes too little. We show that a key driver of whether people overinfer or underinfer is the strength of the information. Based on a model in which people know which direction to update in, but not exactly how much to update, we hypothesize that people will overinfer from weak signals and underinfer from strong

This article studies the long-run effects of government-led construction of manufacturing plants on the regions where they were built and on individuals from those regions. Specifically, we examine publicly financed plants built in dispersed locations outside of major urban centers for security reasons during the U.S. industrial mobilization for World War II. Wartime plant construction had large and

In all OECD countries, mandatory notice (MN) policies require firms to inform workers in advance of a layoff. In our theoretical framework, MN helps workers avoid unemployment and find better jobs by encouraging them to search for a new job while still employed, thereby increasing future production. The magnitude of this production gain depends on the relative effectiveness of search while employed

Tax authorities around the world rely on audits to detect underreported tax liabilities and to verify that taxpayers qualify for the benefits they claim. We study differences in Internal Revenue Service audit rates between Black and non-Black taxpayers. Because neither we nor the IRS observe taxpayer race, we propose and use a novel partial identification strategy to estimate these differences. Despite

We study the effect of monetary and fiscal policy in a heterogeneous-agent model where households have present-biased time preferences and naive beliefs. The model features a liquid asset and illiquid home equity, which households can use as collateral for borrowing. Because present bias substantially increases households’ marginal propensity to consume (MPC), present bias increases the effect of fiscal

This article explores the use of social signaling as a policy tool to sustainably affect childhood immunization. In a 26-month field experiment with public clinics in Sierra Leone, I introduce a verifiable signal—in the form of color-coded bracelets—given to children upon timely completion of the first four or all five required vaccinations. Signals increase parents’ belief in the visibility of their

Forward-looking investments determine the resilience of firms’ supply chains. Such investments confer externalities on other firms in the production network. We compare the equilibrium and optimal allocations in a general equilibrium model with an arbitrary number of vertical production tiers. Our model features endogenous investments in protective capabilities, endogenous formation of supply links

Domestic abuse encompasses a range of damaging behaviors beyond physical violence, including economic and emotional abuse. We analyze the impact of cohabiting with an abusive partner on victims’ economic outcomes. In so doing, we highlight the systematic role of economic suppression in such relationships. Using Finnish administrative data and a matched-control event-study design, along with a within-individual

This article studies the long-run effects of slavery and restrictive Jim Crow institutions on Black Americans’ economic outcomes. We track individual-level census records of each Black family from 1850 to 1940 and extend our analysis to neighborhood-level outcomes in 2000 and surname-based outcomes in 2023. We show that Black families whose ancestors were enslaved until the Civil War have considerably

Tax collection with limited enforcement capacity may be consistent with both high- and low-delinquency regimes: high delinquency reduces the effectiveness of threats, thereby reinforcing high delinquency. We explore the practical challenges of unraveling the high-delinquency equilibrium using a mechanism design insight known as divide-and-conquer. Our preferred mechanism takes the form of prioritized

We estimate perceptions about the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy rule from panel data on professional forecasts of interest rates and macroeconomic conditions. The perceived dependence of the federal funds rate on economic conditions varies substantially over time, in particular over the monetary policy cycle. Forecasters update their perceptions about the Fed’s policy rule in response to monetary

Anti-scientific attitudes can impose substantial costs on societies. Can schools be an important agent in mitigating the propagation of such attitudes? This article investigates the effect of the content of science education on anti-scientific attitudes, knowledge, and choices. The analysis exploits staggered reforms that reduce or expand the coverage of evolution theory in U.S. state science education

For many decisions, we encounter relevant information over the course of days, months, or years. We consume such information in various forms, including stories (qualitative content about individual instances) and statistics (quantitative data about collections of observations). This article proposes that information type—story versus statistic—shapes selective memory. In controlled experiments, we

We study the lifetime effects of the first and largest American youth employment and training program in the United States—the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 1933–1942. We match newly digitized enrollee records to census, World War II enlistment, Social Security, and death records. We find that longer service in the CCC led to improvements in height, health status, longevity, geographic mobility

I investigate the consequences of firms’ joint import and export decisions in the context of large devaluations. I provide empirical evidence that large devaluations are characterized by an increase in the aggregate share of imported inputs in total input spending and by reallocation of resources toward import-intensive firms, contrary to what standard quantitative trade models predict. These facts

Decision makers, such as doctors, judges, and managers, make consequential choices based on predictions of unknown outcomes. Do these decision makers make systematic prediction mistakes based on the available information? If so, in what ways are their predictions systematically biased? In this article, I characterize conditions under which systematic prediction mistakes can be identified in empirical

We estimate the equilibrium effects of a public school grant program administered through school councils in Pakistani villages with multiple public and private schools and clearly defined catchment boundaries. The program was randomized at the village level, allowing us to estimate its causal impact on the market. Four years after the start of the program, test scores were 0.2 standard deviations

What happens when patients suddenly stop their medications? We study the health consequences of drug interruptions caused by large, abrupt, and arbitrary changes in price. Medicare’s prescription drug benefit as-if-randomly assigns 65-year-olds a drug budget as a function of their birth month, beyond which out-of-pocket costs suddenly increase. Those facing smaller budgets consume fewer drugs and die

In 2013, the Dutch government mandated that new conforming mortgages must fully amortize. Within a difference-in-differences design, we estimate that the marginal wealth accumulation from amortization is close to one, even five years later. Households purchasing after the reform primarily cut consumption and leisure over other savings, leading to a rise in wealth. This holds if we use life events to

The Neolithic revolution saw the independent development of agriculture among at least seven unconnected hunter-gatherer populations. I propose that the rapid spread of agricultural techniques resulted from increased climatic seasonality causing hunter-gatherers to adopt a sedentary lifestyle and store food for the season of scarcity. Their newfound sedentary lifestyle and storage habits facilitated

Many consumers care about climate change and other externalities associated with their purchases. We analyze the behavior and market effects of such “socially responsible consumers” in three parts. First, we develop a flexible theoretical framework to study competitive equilibria with rational consequentialist consumers. In violation of price taking, equilibrium feedback nontrivially dampens the impact

We answer three core questions about the hypothesized role of newly emerging job categories (“new work”) in counterbalancing the erosive effect of task-displacing automation on labor demand: what is the substantive content of new work, where does it come from, and what effect does it have on labor demand? We construct a novel database spanning eight decades of new job titles linked to U.S. Census microdata

We develop empirical tools for studying discrimination in multiphase systems and apply them to the setting of foster care placement by child protective services. Leveraging the quasi-random assignment of two sets of decision-makers—initial hotline call screeners and subsequent investigators—we study how unwarranted racial disparities arise and propagate through this system. Using a sample of over 200

In the 1960s, two landmark statutes—the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts—targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars to conclude that the legislation was ineffectual. This article revisits this conclusion using two research designs

In the early 1900s, telephone operation was among the most common jobs for American women, and telephone operators were ubiquitous. Between 1920 and 1940, AT&T undertook one of the largest automation investments in modern history, replacing operators with mechanical switching technology in over half of the U.S. telephone network. Using variation across U.S. cities in the timing of adoption, we study

The gender ask gap measures the extent to which women ask for lower salaries than comparable men. This article studies its role in generating wage inequality, using novel data from an online recruitment platform for full-time engineering jobs: Hired.com. To use the platform, job candidates must post an ask salary, stating how much they want to make in their next job. Firms then apply to candidates