AEA Research Highlights

Publicly available statistics on career earnings show that an economics degree pays far more on the job market than degrees in other social sciences. But it's not clear that those higher salaries reveal the true returns to studying the dismal science.  In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , authors Zachary Bleemer and Aashish Mehta identify the causal effects of choosing...

Black Lives Matter protests have put a spotlight on police abuses since 2014, but it has been challenging for  researchers to assess the impact of race from the available data.  In a paper in the American Economic Review , authors Mark Hoekstra and CarlyWill Sloan found that White officers use force more frequently than Black officers, especially in Black neighborhoods.  Sloan says that their work...

The COVID-19 pandemic has already significantly widened wealth and income disparities around the world.  Poorer populations suffered higher rates of infection, and workers in low paying jobs were the most impacted by widespread shutdowns. But not all pandemics have had the same effect. In a paper in the Journal of Economic Literature , author Guido Alfani looks at the history of pandemics stretchi...

The past weighs on every country, and nowhere is that more true than in Africa. The continent's legacy of slavery, colonialism, and division has stood in the way of Africa's struggle for stability and economic progress. But in a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives , authors Nathan Canen and Leonard Wantchekon argue that economists must primarily consider the impact of modern-day policy c...

In the first half of the twentieth century, four million African Americans left the Jim Crow South to create new lives for themselves. They moved to cities like Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago in what came to be known as "the Great Migration." And indeed, they did improve their economic standing, with some families doubling their earnings. But opportunities to move up the ladder would dwindle for...

The United States has dramatically increased its funding for public schools over the last four decades. Real per-pupil expenditures have nearly doubled since 1980.  In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy , author Jason Baron found that when school budgets increased in Wisconsin, how that money got allocated made a big difference into student outcomes. Baron says that addition...

Nine in ten Republicans say increasing border security is important, and immigration remains a salient issue with voters entering the 2022 midterm elections. But it's not just general opposition to immigrants that registers with voters. The skills immigrants bring shape how US voters view them. In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , authors Anna Maria Mayda , Giovanni Per...

Only four times in US presidential history has the candidate with fewer popular votes won the election. Two of those occurred recently in 2000 and 2016, leading to calls to reform the system. Far from being a fluke, this peculiar outcome of the US Electoral College has a high probability in close races, according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics . Authors Michael Geru...

This is a rebroadcast of a conversation that Chris Fleisher had with University of Georgia professor Emily Lawler back in 2019 about her research on vaccine mandates for adolescents.

Head Start was launched nearly sixty years ago as part of the United States' War on Poverty. Since then, it has helped prepare millions of kids for first grade. The architects of the program hoped that putting disadvantaged children on more equal footing with their better-off peers would set them up for future success. But the long-run impacts are only now becoming clear. In a paper in the America...

The Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a national conversation around police reform, with proposals ranging from reallocating resources to outright abolition of local departments. Economists could help inform these discussions. But critics say existing economic research falls short of understanding the true impacts of policing on communities. In a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives...

With advances in modern medicine, US life expectancy steadily improved over the second half of the 20th century. But that progress masked a growing gap in mortality between poorer and richer states that started in the 1980s.  The exact reasons for this divergence are still unknown, but a  paper in the  Journal of Economic Perspectives helps rule out some possibilities and provides guidance about w...

The American Civil War and emancipation ended chattel slavery, and as a result, substantially reduced the fortunes of slaveholding households in the years immediately following the war. In a paper in the American Economic Review , authors Philipp Ager , Leah Boustan , and Katherine Eriksson find that many White former slave-owning households rebuilt much of their lost wealth in just one generation...

DNA databases have become essential for solving crimes with few to no leads. But their benefits extend beyond finding suspects.  They provide a powerful tool for preventing crimes from happening in the first place, according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics . Authors Anne Sofie Tegner Anker , Jennifer L. Doleac , and Rasmus Landersø found that the expansion of DNA dat...

Austin was a laid-back college town in the 1980s when a student at the University of Texas named Michael Dell began selling computers from his dorm room. At the time, Texas's capital city was perhaps known more for high hats than high-tech. But the company Dell started would become the world's largest PC maker and attracted a slew of talent that turned Austin into a technology hub. Enrico Moretti...

Countries around the world are contemplating aggressive plans to curb CO₂ emissions in the coming decades. Many see the electrification of the transportation sector as the first step, but in a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy , economist Stephen P. Holland warns against using simple bans on the sale of gasoline vehicles to achieve that goal. Holland and coauthors Erin T. Man...

Right-wing radio has served as a megaphone for populist outrage in America. Talk-show hosts like Alex Jones and the late Rush Limbaugh have railed against cultural elites, promoted baseless claims of election fraud, stoked a backlash against immigrants, and questioned the effectiveness of masks and vaccinations amid the Covid-19 pandemic. How and to what extent do these charismatic radio personali...

COVID-19 has reshaped work in numerous ways. Many fortunate white-collar Americans spent the last year working from home. Others in service-oriented jobs lost work or spent their workdays behind masks and plexiglass.   These pandemic-related changes have been especially hard on women, according to a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives . Economists Stefania Albanesi and Jiyeon Kim found t...

Tax evasion costs the United States hundreds of billions of dollars every year.  But for some Americans, hiding income from the government is about more than keeping every possible penny they earned for themselves. It's also a form of political protest.   In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy , authors Julie Berry Cullen , Nicholas Turner , and Ebonya Washington investigate...

For a military intervention to end successfully, foreign forces have to hand off security to domestic forces. But historically, these transitions have rarely gone well. In a paper in the American Economic Review , political scientist Austin L. Wright examined the impact of NATO troop withdrawals from Afghanistan on insurgent violence and local perceptions of security conditions. He and coauthors T...

**Editor's note: This is a rebroadcast of an interview from 2019. College sports have become big business, and everybody's making money except the players. The National Collegiate Athletic Association prohibits "student athletes" from receiving a cut of the millions of dollars in revenue that schools collect from games and product licensing. Instead, players get scholarships, the value of which pa...

Culture is shaped by the conditions in which humans live. As societies modernize, their cultural traditions will change too. But it's difficult to identify what is driving those changes and what role public policy may be playing. In a paper in the American Economic Review , UCLA professor Natalie Bau investigated how the introduction of a formal pension system affected traditional family arrangeme...

Police officers have a lot of discretion in how they enforce the law, but they are not always evenhanded in how they employ their judgement. In a paper in the American Economic Review , Dartmouth College economist Steven Mello examined variations in speeding enforcement by officers with the Florida Highway Patrol.. He and coauthor Felipe Goncalves found that nearly half of the officers practiced r...

A lot has changed since the first economics papers on LGBTQ issues appeared in the mid-1990s.  The volume of research in this area has grown significantly. There is more awareness of an expanding array of identities and a broader push to root out discrimination within the economics profession. Lee Badgett wrote some of those early foundational papers more than two decades ago and has been at the f...

Can economists trust their models? How does their data drive their conclusions? These are some of the big questions that motivate econometrician Isaiah Andrews . The Harvard professor was awarded th is year's John Bates Clark Medal for his contributions to econometric theory and empirical practice. And while Andrews works on some of the most technically difficult questions in economics, he says he...