Highlighted Publications




 

Agan et al. (2026) examined whether electing a reform-minded prosecutor changes misdemeanor and felony charging and conviction rates. They analyzed county-level administrative criminal justice data from the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS) covering 25 jurisdictions, using variation in the timing of reform prosecutors taking office and a staggered difference-in-differences design. They found that reform prosecutors reduced misdemeanor convictions by about

Finkelstein and Gentzkow (2026) asked whether places that increase Medicare spending also increase life expectancy for older adults. They analyzed Medicare claims and mortality data for millions of beneficiaries, using migration (“mover”) designs to separate the effects of places from the characteristics of the people who live there. They found that places with larger causal effects on health care spending did not produce longer life expectancy. Place-based factors explained

Gottlieb and Nicholson (2026) asked how barriers to physician entry and competition from substitute health care providers shape physician markets. They reviewed evidence from medical school and residency data, physician workforce statistics, licensing regulations, insurance claims, earnings data, and prior economic research. They found that strict limits on medical school and residency positions continue to restrict physician supply, while nurse practitioners, physician assis

Bhattacharya, Illanes, and Stillerman (2026) ask how mergers affect consumer prices and whether U.S. antitrust enforcement effectively identifies harmful mergers. They examine 129 consumer product markets involved in 47 mergers from 2006 to 2017, using NielsenIQ retail scanner data. They find that mergers increased prices by only 0.4% on average, but effects varied substantially. Twenty-five percent of mergers raised prices by more than 3.9%, while another quarter reduced pri

Ainsworth, Liu, and Penner (2026) asked whether adopting a four-day school week changes teacher turnover in the short and long term. They analyzed administrative records for all public school employees in Oregon from 2006–2007 through 2023–2024, using a difference-in-differences research design to estimate the policy’s causal effects. They found that schools adopting a four-day week experienced a 2.0 percentage point increase in teacher turnover. This included a 0.7 percentag

Buehler et al. (2026) asked how physician incomes compare across the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, and Sweden, and whether higher US physician pay reflects physicians’ relative position in the income distribution or higher incomes at comparable income levels. They analyzed administrative tax records covering nearly all physicians in each country. They found that physicians ranked among the highest earners everywhere, but US physicians earned much more. Eighty-four p

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