Highlighted Publications




 

Agniel et al. (2026) asked whether Medicare’s 2020 decision to cover methadone treatment for opioid use disorder changed how opioid treatment programs operated and whether it expanded access to care. They analyzed national administrative data on treatment facilities (2015–2023) and treatment episodes using difference-in-differences methods. They found that opioid treatment programs were 45.4 percentage points more likely to accept Medicare after the policy, nearly doubling pa

Diliberti et al. (2026) examined whether stricter school cell phone policies reduce students’ cell phone use during the school day. They analyzed survey responses from 774 U.S. middle and high school students in the nationally representative RAND American Youth Panel, comparing students across five levels of policy strictness. They found that stricter policies substantially reduced phone use. About 84% of students in schools with the most lenient policies checked their phones

Unrath et al. (2026) asked whether unconditional state child tax credits can reduce child poverty without substantially reducing parental employment. They used American Community Survey data, Supplemental Poverty Measure data, tax simulations, and labor supply estimates from recent state child tax credit studies to model the effects of different credit amounts and income phaseouts. They found that a $1,000 credit per child, phased out beginning at $50,000 for single filers, w

Swiderski and McDonnell (2026) examined whether students who begin at a community college have different long-term educational, occupational, and wage outcomes than similar students who start at a four-year college. They analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), linked to O*NET occupational data, and compared similar students using propensity score weighting. They found that community college starters were more than 20 percentage points less

Olenski (2025) examined whether nursing home closures harm displaced long-stay residents or improve their long-term outcomes by moving them to better facilities. He analyzed nationwide administrative data on all long-stay U.S. nursing home residents, including 1,104 nursing home closures, using a matched difference-in-differences design. He found that closures increased short-term mortality by 1.18 percentage points, a 16.3% increase over the baseline quarterly mortality rate

Amuedo-Dorantes and Wang (2026) examined whether the economic and social benefits of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program persisted after the Trump administration’s 2017 effort to end the program created prolonged policy uncertainty. They analyzed 2008–2022 American Community Survey data (excluding 2020) using difference-in-differences and event-study methods to compare DACA-eligible and ineligible undocumented immigrants. They found that early labor mark

Feigenberg and Miller (2025) examine whether police officers discriminate against low-income motorists during traffic stops and searches. They analyze more than 11 million traffic stops conducted by the Texas Highway Patrol between 2009 and 2015, linking motorists to measures of household income and vehicle status. They find large class disparities in policing. Motorists in the bottom income quintile were searched in 2.5% of stops, compared with 1.1% for those in the top quin

Bor et al. (2026) examined which causes of death account for the large number of excess deaths in the United States compared with 17 other high-income countries between 1999 and 2022. They analyzed more than 63.5 million U.S. deaths using mortality data from the World Health Organization Mortality Database. They found that the United States experienced about 12.7 million excess deaths during the study period, rising from 346,166 in 1999 to 905,159 in 2022. In 2022, circulator

Mayer, Méjean, and Thoenig (2026) examined whether credible threats of economic sanctions can deter war, using the Russia–Ukraine conflict as a case study. They combined international trade data from 1995–2021 with a quantitative model linking trade, diplomacy, and the probability of armed conflict. Their analysis found that Ukraine’s reduced economic dependence on Russia after 2014 lowered the economic costs of war and increased the predicted risk of conflict by more than 5

Sinaiko (2026) examines how contracts between health insurers and health care providers affect competition in health care markets. She asks whether contract provisions help insurers lower prices and improve competition or allow dominant provider systems to preserve market power. Drawing on evidence from prior studies, antitrust cases, insurer-provider contracts, and health care market data, she finds that selective contracting, tiered networks, and reference-based pricing can

Filippucci, Gal, and Schief (2026) examine how much generative artificial intelligence is likely to increase productivity across the U.S. economy and whether uneven gains across industries will reduce overall growth. They combine data on AI task exposure, industry employment patterns, AI adoption rates, and U.S. input-output tables covering 65 industries. They estimate that AI could increase aggregate total factor productivity growth by about 0.87 percentage points annually o

Young-Wolff et al. (2026) examined whether adolescent cannabis use is associated with an increased risk of developing psychotic, bipolar, depressive, and anxiety disorders by young adulthood. They analyzed data from 463,396 adolescents ages 13–17 who received routine cannabis-use screenings within Kaiser Permanente Northern California between 2016 and 2023 and followed them through age 25. They found that adolescents who reported cannabis use had substantially higher risks of

Macambira et al. (2025) examined whether privately managed Medicaid plans perform better than publicly administered fee-for-service Medicaid in controlling costs while maintaining quality and consumer satisfaction. They analyzed administrative data from nearly 100,000 Louisiana Medicaid enrollees who were randomly assigned to either private managed care or public fee-for-service coverage. They found that private managed care reduced overall healthcare spending by 5.6%, includ

Patel, Liu, and Jena (2026) examined whether the launch of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in July 2022 was associated with changes in suicide mortality among adolescents and young adults ages 15–34. They analyzed national mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System from 1999–2024 and compared observed suicide deaths after the launch of 988 with deaths expected based on prior trends. They found that suicide mortality was significantly lower than expected afte

Egede et al. (2026) examined whether African American or Black race, historic redlining, and contemporary structural racism are associated with diabetes prevalence in U.S. neighborhoods and what pathways explain those relationships. They analyzed data from 15,190 census tracts across 157 counties using CDC diabetes prevalence estimates, census data, historical redlining maps, and a multidimensional measure of contemporary structural racism. They found that contemporary struct

Mejia, Wigul, Hsieh, and Johnson (2026) examined whether the benefits of earning a college degree outweigh the costs for California students. They drew on labor market, higher education, financial aid, and student debt data from California and national sources to compare earnings, employment outcomes, college costs, and borrowing patterns across educational levels. They found that college graduates earn substantially more than non-graduates, with bachelor’s degree holders ear

Sacerdote, Staiger, and Tine (2025) examined whether test-optional college admissions policies help or harm high-achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. They analyzed admissions and enrollment data from Dartmouth College covering more than 99,000 applicants across test-required and test-optional years. Their primary question was whether withholding SAT or ACT scores affects admission outcomes. They found that high-achieving disadvantaged students often failed to

Lofstrom, Martin, and Susanto (2026) examined whether racial disparities in law enforcement stops in California narrowed between 2019 and 2023. They analyzed more than 15 million traffic and pedestrian stops reported by California’s 15 largest law enforcement agencies under the Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA). They found that overall stops declined sharply after the pandemic, remaining about one million below pre-pandemic levels by 2023. The Black-white gap in police

Leifheit et al. (2026) examined which state-level factors were associated with rising homelessness across U.S. states between 2019 and 2024. They analyzed annual state-level data on homelessness counts, rents, unemployment, eviction moratoria, emergency rental assistance, overdose deaths, immigration, and climate-related property damage. Their primary finding was that eviction moratoria and climate-related disasters were the factors most consistently associated with year-over

Almås, Drange, Meghir, and Zachrisson (2026) examined whether attending childcare at an earlier age improves academic performance later in childhood and adolescence. They used Norwegian administrative registry data covering entire national birth cohorts from 2002–2007, along with standardized math and reading test scores in grades 5 and 9. They found that starting childcare one year earlier increased ninth-grade math scores by about 9.7% of a standard deviation overall. The e

Kouchekinia, Neumark, and Bruckner (2026) examined whether staying employed slows cognitive decline among older adults before retirement age. They asked whether losing work because of local labor market shocks causes faster declines in memory and cognitive functioning. The authors analyzed 1996–2018 data from the Health and Retirement Study, combined with local labor market and industry employment data across U.S. commuting zones. Using a Bartik labor-demand instrument to est

Slaughter and Weiss (2026) examined whether evidence-based community college interventions can “pay for themselves” from the college perspective through added tuition revenue and state funding. They analyzed cost and outcome data from 19 randomized controlled trial interventions and simulated implementation across 857 community colleges in 41 states. The interventions averaged about $2,100 in costs per student but generated only about $200 in new revenue, leaving colleges wit

Gonçalves, Jácome, and Weisburst (2026) examined whether immigration enforcement policies reduce public safety by discouraging crime victims from reporting crimes to police. They studied the Secure Communities program, which increased cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. The authors used data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, Immigration and Customs Enforcement records, FBI crime data, Census data, and police department re

Han, Heblich, Timmins, and Zylberberg (2025) examined whether urban trees increase property values and reduce heat, pollution, and energy use in cities. They analyzed detailed land-cover data, satellite temperature records, energy consumption data, pollution measures, and more than 450,000 housing transactions in Toronto between 2007 and 2020. They used the spread of the invasive Emerald Ash Borer beetle, which killed large numbers of ash trees, as a natural experiment to mea