Publications

How does the extent of policy benefits — not simply their presence — affect political engagement? While fundamental to understanding the electoral implications of economic policymaking, addressing this question is challenging due to the…

In a wide variety of applications, including healthcare, bidding in first price auctions, digital recommendations, and online education, it can be beneficial to learn a policy that assigns treatments to individuals based on their characteristics…

We study how international agreements can take advantage of domestic time-inconsistency problems in the context of environmental policies. For example, policymakers will prefer future policies to be sustainable, but find it tempting to raise…

Why are there few debates in low-information elections where they have the greatest potential to inform vote choices? Consistent with weak incentives to reveal qualifications or make policy commitments, we find only a quarter of Parliamentary…

Conspiracy theories are a constant feature of human society but have recently risen in prominence with the flurry of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and their public display in social media. Conspiracy theories should be studied not only because of…

Recent years have seen a growing sociological interest in meaning. In fact, some argue that sociology cannot confront its foundational questions without addressing meaning. Yet sociologists mean many things when they talk about meaning. We…

Has the United States economy become less competitive in recent decades? One might think so based on a body of research that has rapidly become influential for antitrust policy. We explain that the empirical evidence relating to concentration…

During an investigation using Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy, which is a novel approach for solving violent crimes and identifying human remains, reference testing—when law enforcement requests a DNA sample from a person in a partially…

Current corporate disclosures regarding carbon emissions lack commonly accepted accounting rules. The carbon accrual accounting system described here takes the rules of historical cost accounting for operating assets as a template for generating…

Using rich data on hourly physical productivity and thousands of ownership changes from U.S. power plants, we study the effects of acquisitions on efficiency and underlying mechanisms. We find a 2% average increase in efficiency for acquired…

This paper examines the determinants of public procurement prices using comprehensive data on pharmaceutical purchases by the public sector in Chile. We first document sizable price differences between buyers for the same product and quantity…

Our central banks set interest rates, and do not even pretend to control money supplies. How do interest rates affect inflation? We finally have a complete economic theory of inflation under interest rate targets and unconstrained…

We study how vertical integration shapes firms’ public disclosures. Theory suggests that firms can use public disclosure to coordinate with supply chain partners and predicts a substitution between vertical integration and public disclosure of…

We develop a theoretical model and conduct field experiments to distinguish the impact of identity on shaping beliefs from its direct effect on preferences in individual investment choices. Our model suggests that identity distorts individuals’…

Privately issued money often bears devaluation risk that create monetary transaction frictions. We evaluate the real effects of supplying a new type of safe money in the historical context of the U.S. in 1863. We instrument for the change in…

This paper theoretically and empirically studies the interaction of search and application approval in credit markets. Risky borrowers internalize the probability that their application is rejected and behave as if they had high search costs.…

Organizational secrecy is central to national security, politics, business, technology, healthcare, and law, but its effects are largely unknown. Keeping organizational secrets creates social divides between those who are required to keep the…

We study the tax payment and innovation consequences of limiting the tax deductibility of research and development (“R&D”) expenditures. Beginning in 2022, U.S. companies are required to capitalize and amortize R&D rather than immediately…

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