Publications

Redistributive policies designed to reduce economic inequality through taxes and transfers (e.g., safety-net benefits funded by progressive taxation) receive less support in the United States than in many Western democracies. Recent work suggests…

We study randomized experiments in a service system when stochastic congestion can arise from temporarily limited supply or excess demand. Such congestion gives rise to cross-unit interference between the waiting customers, and analytic…

There appears to be a tension between trade proponents and environmental activists. This paper shows, however, how Contingent Trade Agreements (CTAs) can motivate conservation. I first analyse a standard trade model where trade-specific…

We introduce a generic estimator for the false discovery rate of any model selection procedure, in common statistical modeling settings including the Gaussian linear model, Gaussian graphical model, and model-X setting. We prove that our method…

We survey a growing literature on correlated learning—that is, how information from one choice changes beliefs about others when outcomes are correlated. The core modeling innovation is to represent the unknown mapping from choices to outcomes as…

Do informational interventions work because they lead subjects to merely update beliefs in the right direction or, to a large extent, because they increase the salience of the decision they target? We randomly assign parents to either an…

We analyze acquisitions in US power plants by using rich data on hourly productivity and thousands of ownership changes. We find a 2% average increase in efficiency for acquired plants, beginning 5 months after acquisition. Efficiency gains rise…

Despite concern about exposure to content from untrustworthy sources on social media, little is known about the frequency or effects of exposure to their content. We examine 2020 data from all active US adults on Facebook and Instagram to measure…

Significance

Economic inequality continues to widen in the United States and globally, yet the organizational processes that reproduce social stratification remain insufficiently understood. This research identifies negotiation…

People typically read the titles of content (e.g., an article or post) before deciding whether to consume it. Titles can be composed as a statement (e.g., “Green Tea Has Health Benefits”) or a question (e.g., “Does Green Tea Have Health Benefits…

There is growing interest in how large language models (LLMs) can advance social and behavioural science. Previous work has assessed LLMs’ ability to predict survey responses, but less is known about whether they can predict the outcomes of…

Background

Telemedicine use has increased, but its impact on access to initial cardiac care remains understudied. We assessed the association of new patient visit modality with geographic reach and wait times at an academic…

We study human capital in venture capital (VC) using a new dataset covering over 100,000 professionals affiliated with U.S. VC firms. Investment success is extremely concentrated: fewer than 40% of VCs with any investments are ever credited with…

We analyze a fundamental dilemma and time-inconsistency problem facing climate-concerned producers of natural gas. In the short term, it is tempting to produce more to outcompete coal. When this policy is anticipated, however, investments in…

We use equity returns to construct a time-varying measure of the zero-beta interest rate: the expected return of a stock portfolio orthogonal to the stochastic discount factor. In contrast to safe rates, the zero-beta rate fits the aggregate…

Social class is more than an economic divide; it engenders distinct cultural patterns. Building on tightness-looseness theory, we identify a critical yet overlooked dimension of within-society cultural variation across social class contexts: the…