Your Place in the World: Relative Income and Global Inequality

By Dietmar Fehr, Johanna Mollerstrom, and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2022

Although there is abundant evidence on individual preferences for policies that reduce national inequality, there is very little evidence on preferences for policies addressing global inequality. To investigate the latter, we conducted a two-year, face-to...

Reminders Work, but for Whom? Evidence from New York City Parking Ticket Recipients

By Ori Heffetz, Ted O'Donoghue, and Henry S. Schneider

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2022

We investigate heterogeneity in responsiveness to reminder letters among New York City parking ticket recipients. Using variation in the timing of letters, we find a strong aggregate response. But we find large differences across individuals: those with a...

The Old-Age Security Motive for Fertility: Evidence from the Extension of Social Pensions in Namibia

By Pauline Rossi and Mathilde Godard

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2022

The old-age security motive for fertility postulates that people's needs for old-age support raise the demand for children. We exploit the extension of social pensions in Namibia during the 1990s to provide a quasi-experimental quantification of this wide...

Mandatory Energy Efficiency Disclosure in Housing Markets

By Erica Myers, Steven L. Puller, and Jeremy West

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2022

Mandatory disclosure policies are implemented broadly despite sparse evidence that they improve market outcomes. We study the effects of requiring home sellers to provide buyers with certified audits of residential energy efficiency. Using similar nearby ...

Can Nudges Increase Take-Up of the EITC? Evidence from Multiple Field Experiments

By Elizabeth Linos, Allen Prohofsky, Aparna Ramesh, Jesse Rothstein, and Matthew Unrath

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2022

The Earned Income Tax Credit distributes more than $60 billion to over 20 million low-income families annually. Nevertheless, an estimated one-fifth of eligible households do not claim it. We ran six preregistered, large-scale field experiments with 1 mil...

Adviser Value Added and Student Outcomes: Evidence from Randomly Assigned College Advisers

By Serena Canaan, Antoine Deeb, and Pierre Mouganie

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2022

This paper provides the first causal evidence on the impact of college advisor quality on student outcomes. To do so, we exploit a unique setting where students are randomly assigned to faculty advisors during their first year of college. We find that hig...

Optimal Regulation of E-cigarettes: Theory and Evidence

By Hunt Allcott and Charlie Rafkin

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2022

We model optimal e-cigarette regulation and estimate key parameters. Using tax changes and scanner data, we estimate relatively elastic demand. A demographic shift-share identification strategy suggests limited substitution between e-cigarettes and cigare...

Hungry for Success? SNAP Timing, High-Stakes Exam Performance, and College Attendance

By Timothy N. Bond, Jillian B. Carr, Analisa Packham, and Jonathan Smith

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2022

Monthly government transfer programs create cycles of consumption that track the timing of benefit receipt. If these cycles correspond to critical moments for student learning and achievement, the timing of transfers may have important long-run implicatio...

Quantitative Researcher

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How Merchant Towns Shaped Parliaments: From the Norman Conquest of England to the Great Reform Act

By Charles Angelucci, Simone Meraglia, and Nico Voigtländer

American Economic Review, October 2022

We study the emergence of urban self-governance in the late medieval period. We focus on England after the Norman Conquest of 1066, building a novel comprehensive dataset of 554 medieval towns. During the Commercial Revolution (twelfth to thirteenth centu...

Protecting vulnerable kids

[Research Highlight]

August 18, 2022

Joseph Doyle discusses the history and economics of foster care in the United States.

Trading places

[Research Highlight]

September 06, 2022

How much does trade impact urbanization?

School bullying, cyberbullying, and remote learning

[Research Highlight]

September 14, 2022

Andrew Bacher-Hicks and Joshua Goodman discuss the effects of the pandemic on bullying.

Local elections in China

[Research Highlight]

September 30, 2022

Why do autocracies sometimes use democratic institutions?

Fundraising Appeals and the Lift/Shift Question

[Research Highlight]

October 19, 2022

Sarah Smith discusses the impact of major fundraising interventions on overall charitable donations.

Inflation expectations and economic outcomes

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How did inflation and inflation expectations change during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Housing debt and mobility

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Do underwater mortgages stop people from moving?

The equity of taxing tobacco

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How regressive are cigarette taxes?

Testing the pollution-haven hypothesis

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Do tighter environmental regulations in developed countries shift polluting activities to developing countries?

The economic origins of self-governance

[Research Highlight]

November 01, 2022

How did commerce in England influence parliamentary representation?