The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the hopes that it would keep businesses from laying off workers during government shutdown measures taken to contain the spread of the disease.

Initial estimates of the direct impacts have been mixed, with some studies suggesting that the cost was hundreds of thousands of dollars per job saved.

But a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy looked beyond the labor market at a second order effect showing a clear and positive benefit. Authors Sumit Agarwal, Brent W. Ambrose, Luis A. Lopez, Xue Xiao found that the PPP reduced mortgage delinquencies for commercial real estate by roughly $36 billion in 2020 and likely played an important role in averting wider distress in financial markets.

Ambrose recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the impact of PPP loans on the commercial real estate market and ways in which the program could have been better targeted.

In 2005, Austria’s most prominent far-right party proclaimed a “Third Turkish Siege of Vienna.” The campaign warned voters that, like their ancestors who were almost overrun by the Ottoman Empire four centuries ago, they were being culturally invaded by Muslims. The campaigners hoped to use long-past historical events to shape the behavior and sentiments of modern-day voters. But did it work?

The strategy sparked a surge in the far-right’s vote share and a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment, according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. The authors, Christian Ochsner and Felix Roesel, studied areas with ties to the historical trauma of the Sieges of Vienna and explained how political innovators reinvigorated latent xenophobic narratives that mobilized voters.

Ochsner recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the recent political environment in Austria, the use of historical parallels, and the impact on Muslim minorities.

Seven years before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ended the legal segregation of Black schoolchildren, California ended the legal segregation of Mexican American schoolchildren.

That decision, known as Mendez v. Westminster, had a rapid impact across the state and led to significant educational benefits, according to a paper in the Journal Economic Literature. 

Authors Francisca M. Antman and Kalena E. Cortes found that in areas more likely to practice segregation, the Mendez decision caused Mexican American children to significantly increase their years of schooling.

Antman recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the history of Mexican American school desegregation and the lessons the authors’ work provides for policymakers.

The bulk of education research focuses on the benefits of the traditional K–12 and higher education systems, while non-traditional programs are relatively understudied. But economists are starting to shine a light on the large returns to investing in adult education.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, authors Blake H. Heller and Kirsten Slungaard Mummafound large earnings gains and more civic engagement among immigrants who participated in an adult program teaching English as a second language (ESL). The benefits of these programs also led to a sizable return for taxpayers.

Heller suggests that, in spite of the polarized space of immigration politics, ESL programs are likely to find traction on both sides of the political aisle because they combine the appeal of people working hard to improve themselves with a social safety net appeal. He recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the need for more research on adult education and the benefits of English language programs.

The United States spends over a billion dollars a year on housing programs that give recently released prisoners a place to stay and modest support before reintegration into society. Yet there is little causal evidence that these programs work.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, author Logan M. Lee estimated whether residential housing programs in Iowa kept prisoners from returning to prison. He found that instead of reducing recidivism, prisoners assigned to halfway houses appeared to have higher rates of reincarceration than those who were paroled. 

Lee recently spoke with Tyler Smith about how he arrived at his estimates and whether or not residential housing programs should be scaled back in the United States.

The costs of Alzheimer’s disease are significant. In 2021, it affected nearly 6 million Americans and accounted for an estimated 8 percent of total US health-care spending—about as much as cancer and heart disease combined. And those numbers are only expected to increase as the population ages.

In a paper in the Journal of Economic Literature, authors Amitabh Chandra, Courtney Coile, and Corina Mommaerts explain how economists can help provide insights into the numerous policy issues that Alzheimer’s disease raises. However, Mommaerts says that the disease also challenges core assumptions in the standard economics tool kit.

She recently spoke with Tyler Smith about cognitive constraints, incentives for providers, and encouraging more innovative treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.

For decades US policymakers have tried to achieve the universal health insurance coverage that many other developed countries enjoy. But despite incremental reforms, based on tweaking health insurance markets, America's uninsured population has remained stubbornly high.

In a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspective, authors Katherine Baicker, Amitabh Chandra, and Mark Shepard argue that economists should move away from the paradigm that has inspired these past reforms and toward an approach that encourages wholesale change. They say that proposals should start from a basic, mandatory health insurance package, which can then be supplemented in markets for health insurance. 

Shepard recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the success of health care systems using this framework in other developed countries and why economists need to rethink their approach to health insurance reform in the United States.

Around the world, female entrepreneurs borrow less than their male counterparts. Many people suggest that the reason for this gap comes down to the fact that women select into less capital-intensive industries.

But in a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, authors J. Michelle Brock and Ralph De Haas show that implicit bias against women leads to more onerous ​​guarantor requirements on loans. The findings come from a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted with over three hundred Turkish loan officers and real-life loan applications.

Brock says that the additional collateral requirements placed on female entrepreneurs could be a significant barrier to women running businesses. But there may be steps that banks can take to mitigate the problem. 

Brock recently spoke with Tyler Smith about her and De Haas’s experiment in Turkey and what lessons policymakers should take away from the results.

A wave of political demonstrations in recent years has grabbed headlines and helped to reshape the political landscape. But it’s an open question as to whether these protest movements actually change opinions in the long run.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, authors Daniel Hungerman and Vivek Moorthy found that activism can have a lasting impact on local communities. In particular, they found that areas with unusually bad weather on the original Earth Day in 1970, which would have presumably lowered the participation rate, saw weaker support for the environment and worse newborn health outcomes 10 to 20 years later.

Hungerman says that while climate change is a global phenomenon, their work is a reminder that bringing people together still makes a difference at the local level.

He recently spoke with Tyler Smith about how the first Earth Day shaped communities’ views about the environment and what his research contributes to the broader conversation around climate change.

Fans have frequently experienced the frustration of event tickets selling out in a matter of minutes and then being resold for twice as much or more. This combination of underpriced tickets in the primary market and rent-seeking speculation in the secondary market has long puzzled economists. 

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, authors Eric Budish and Aditya Bhave show that auctions are an easy way to fix broken ticket markets by looking at changes Ticketmaster made in 2003.

However, the benefits of using auctions in primary markets are unlikely to be felt by consumers. Budish says that other reforms, such as preventing resales, could be a way for artists and sports teams to reward their die-hard followers.

Budish recently spoke with Tyler Smith about Ticketmaster’s efforts to curb secondary markets with auctions, and how reforming the primary market for tickets benefits sellers as well as society.

Graduate school should be about learning how to push the frontiers of knowledge. Many students, however, also learn that getting a PhD can push them into emotional and psychological trouble.

In a paper in the Journal of Economic Literature, authors Valentin Bolotnyy, Matthew Basilico, and Paul Barreira surveyed eight top-ranked economics PhD programs across the country and found high levels of significant depression and anxiety symptoms among students.

Their survey indicates that some norms in the field, such as working alone and downplaying emotional distress, may be exacerbating the profession’s mental health issues.

Bolotnyy recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the prevalence of mental distress among economics PhD students and what universities can do to remedy the situation, such as encouraging a more collaborative research environment.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of counseling designed to change unhelpful patterns of thinking. A strong, evidence-based track record has led to its widespread use in high-income countries. But it may also be an important tool for helping people in some of the poorest countries in the world. 

In a paper in the American Economic Review: Insights, authors Nathan Barker, Gharad Bryan, Dean Karlan, Angela Ofori-Atta, and Christopher Udry found that group-based CBT in rural Ghana significantly improved mental and perceived physical health, as well as cognitive and socioemotional skills—even for individuals who did not report mental distress.

The findings may be paired with more traditional economic assistance to get the most out of anti-poverty programs, says Nathan Barker.

Barker recently spoke with Tyler Smith about his experiment in Ghana and why CBT can be beneficial for everyone, not just people suffering poor mental health.

In 1993, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed with bipartisan support and near universal endorsement by economists. In hindsight, the economic costs and political consequences were far greater than many contemporary observers would have imagined.

In a paper in the American Economic Review, authors Jiwon Choi, Ilyana Kuziemko, Ebonya Washington, and Gavin Wright found that US counties most exposed to NAFTA and Mexican import competition saw their total employment drop by roughly 6 percent compared to those with little exposure to the trade deal. However, workers in these communities didn’t respond by moving away to find better opportunities, and many, feeling betrayed by the Democratic party, embraced the Republican party instead. 

Choi and Wright recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the economic and political history of NAFTA and what economists have learned since its passage.

When most Americans look for financial advice, they don't turn to academic journals for guidance. Instead, they’re likely to get information from financial personalities like Dave Ramsey or Robert Kiyosaki, whose books have sold millions of copies.

But how good is that advice? In a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, author James J. Choi looked through 50 of the most popular personal finance books on the market and found that they sometimes deviate from the advice of economists.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the popular authors are wrong. Choi says that while popular finance books may occasionally give bad advice, economists may learn something deeper about how people make financial decisions and the constraints they operate under if they take the popular authors’ prescriptions more seriously.

Choi recently spoke with Tyler Smith about popular financial advice on a range of issues, such as savings rules and mortgage types, and how closely this advice matches modern economic theory.

Religion is a deep source of tradition and meaning for many people around the world, especially those in developing countries. But religious practices can sometimes stand in the way of long-term economic growth, according to a paper in the American Economic Review.

Authors Eduardo Montero and Dean Yang found that ill-timed patron saint day festivals in Mexico lead to lower levels of development. In particular, celebrations coinciding with important agricultural seasons lowered household incomes, over the course of centuries, by roughly 20 percent.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean these festivals made people worse off overall. Montero and Yang say that it’s up to communities and their leaders to decide what the right balance is between cultural traditions and economic growth.

The authors recently spoke with Tyler Smith about patron saint day festivals and why they hampered long-run economic development in Mexico.

Major charity appeals can bring in hundreds of millions of dollars. But many worry that these efforts shift money away from other charities or merely move donations forward in time.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, authors Kimberley Scharf, Sarah Smith, and Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm found that charity fundraisers do in fact lift donations without being offset elsewhere. The findings show that fundraisers can increase the size of the overall charitable pie. 

However, major appeals still have some spillover effects on the timing of donations to other charities. As a result, Smith says that organizations should focus on sustaining fundraising efforts in order to ensure that funds don't disappear in the longer term.

Sarah Smith recently spoke with Tyler Smith about how donors respond to major charity appeals in the United Kingdom and what fundraisers should take away from the results.

The pandemic has taken a toll on the education system. School enrollment has decreased, teacher turnover has ticked up, and students have experienced substantial learning losses. 

But there is at least one silver lining, according to a paper in the American Economic Review: Insights. 

Authors Andrew Bacher-Hicks, Joshua Goodman, Jennifer Greif Green, and Melissa K. Holt found that school bullying and cyberbullying dropped by more than 30 percent as schools shifted to remote learning in the spring of 2020.

Their results are based on real-time tracking of internet searches, which they show contain useful information about actual bullying behavior.

Bacher-Hicks and Goodman recently spoke with Tyler Smith about their approach to studying bullying trends and the degree to which bullying originates in schools and then migrates online.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of kids enter the US foster care system. And yet, improving their welfare remains an understudied topic among economists, according to a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. 

Authors Anthony Bald, Joseph J. Doyle Jr., Max Gross, and Brian A. Jacob lay out an economic framework for understanding the US foster care system.

They detail what economists have learned about both the demand side and supply side of foster care, such as the causes of child maltreatment and the incentives to provide high-quality care.

Doyle recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the history and impact of foster care in the United States, as well as opportunities for future research.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, the share of students leaving college with a degree steadily declined. But according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the trend since then has taken a turn for the better.

Authors Jeffrey T. Denning, Eric R. Eide, Kevin J. Mumford, Richard W. Patterson, and Merrill Warnick documented a large increase in graduation rates over the last three decades. By digging into the records of nine large public universities, a public liberal arts college, and a nationally representative survey, the researchers concluded that grade inflation is the most likely driver, ruling out explanations such as better student preparation.

Denning says that more research is needed to determine whether this grade inflation is beneficial on the whole. But it should be something that school administrators consider when making decisions about grading standards.

Denning recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the impact of grade inflation on college completion rates and the upsides it has as a policy tool.

In the 1990s, drug manufacturers began marketing their products directly to consumers. Since then, prescription drug advertising has become a multibillion dollar industry, and some have worried that it might be getting between patients and what their doctors think is in their best interest.

But in a paper in the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, author Bradley T. Shapiro found that advertising antidepressants on television led to significant improvements in indicators of depression. He says that the gains from decreasing workplace absenteeism far outweigh the costs associated with higher antidepressant sales.

Shapiro recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the challenges of estimating the impact of advertising on consumers and how direct-to-consumer advertising of antidepressants can improve mental health.

Publicly available statistics on career earnings show that an economics degree pays far more on the job market than degrees in other social sciences. But it’s not clear that those higher salaries reveal the true returns to studying the dismal science. 

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, authors Zachary Bleemer and Aashish Mehta identify the causal effects of choosing one major over another by analyzing the outcomes of a policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, that prevented students with low grades in introductory economics courses from declaring an economics major.

They found that studying economics boosted annual early-career wages by $22,000 compared to students' second-choice majors—a return roughly as large as enrolling in college in the first place.

Bleemer says that returns to a major can vary significantly from student to student and college to college. But the results highlight the importance of carefully evaluating information about career earnings when choosing a field of study.

He recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the earnings premium of an economics degree and the downsides of major restriction policies at universities.

Black Lives Matter protests have put a spotlight on police abuses since 2014, but it has been challenging for  researchers to assess the impact of race from the available data. 

In a paper in the American Economic Review, authors Mark Hoekstra and CarlyWill Sloan found that White officers use force more frequently than Black officers, especially in Black neighborhoods. 

Sloan says that their work is a step toward showing that some police departments may have systemic race problems rather than just a few high-profile, one-off incidents.

She recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the challenges of studying officer–civilian interactions and the lessons her work might have for US police departments.

The COVID-19 pandemic has already significantly widened wealth and income disparities around the world. 

Poorer populations suffered higher rates of infection, and workers in low paying jobs were the most impacted by widespread shutdowns.

But not all pandemics have had the same effect.

In a paper in the Journal of Economic Literature, author Guido Alfani looks at the history of pandemics stretching back to the medieval Black Death to examine how factors like mortality rates and the response by wealthy elites affected gaps between the rich and poor.

Alfani says that the lessons from previous pandemics like cholera in the 19th century offer hope for how public policy responses can actually have a meaningful impact on reducing inequality over the long run.

Alfani spoke with Chris Fleisher about how the history of global pandemics can help inform responses to COVID-19 and efforts to address the root causes of poverty. Music in the audio by Podington Bear.

Since 2014, over 15,000 migrants have died or gone missing trying to make the voyage from the north coast of Africa to southern Europe. In response, European authorities have launched several search and rescue operations. There are few signs that migration along this deadly route is slowing down. In fact, efforts to curb migrant deaths may encourage even more migrants to make the perilous journey.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, authors Claudio Deiana, Vikram Maheshri, and Giovanni Mastrobuoni found evidence that migrants and smugglers responded to search and rescue operations by attempting even more dangerous crossings. However, the authors still say that such operations are likely beneficial to migrants on the whole.

Maheshri recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the impact of search and rescue operations on the market for smuggling along the Central Mediterranean Route and what policymakers should do to reduce migrant deaths.

The past weighs on every country, and nowhere is that more true than in Africa. The continent’s legacy of slavery, colonialism, and division has stood in the way of Africa’s struggle for stability and economic progress.

But in a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, authors Nathan Canen and Leonard Wantchekon argue that economists must primarily consider the impact of modern-day policy choices to fully understand long-term growth in Africa.

They say that political distortions—situations where special interest groups are able to direct economic development toward their own ends rather than toward improving general welfare—play an underappreciated role in Africa’s development. Approaching the continent’s economic growth through that lens may lead to more insights about how to create institutions that give average citizens a leg up on special interest groups.

Canen and Wantchekon recently spoke with Tyler Smith about how state capture is holding back economic progress in Africa and what to do about it.

In the first half of the twentieth century, four million African Americans left the Jim Crow South to create new lives for themselves.

They moved to cities like Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago in what came to be known as “the Great Migration.” And indeed, they did improve their economic standing, with some families doubling their earnings. But opportunities to move up the ladder would dwindle for the generations that followed.

In a paper in the American Economic Review, Ellora Derenoncourt shows that the way northern cities responded to the migration dampened the earnings potential for African Americans living in those locations today. 

She says the findings offer insights into how some policies that encourage families to move to opportunity, such as voucher programs, ignore more fundamental questions about the elements that make neighborhoods thrive.

Derenoncourt spoke with Chris Fleisher about her research, the mechanisms that reduced earnings potential for Black residents in some northern cities, and the implications for programs aimed at moving low-income and minority families to opportunity.

The United States has dramatically increased its funding for public schools over the last four decades. Real per-pupil expenditures have nearly doubled since 1980. 

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, author Jason Baron found that when school budgets increased in Wisconsin, how that money got allocated made a big difference into student outcomes.

Baron says that additional spending on operations, such as teacher salaries and support services, positively affected test scores, dropout rates, and postsecondary enrollment. But extra capital expenditures on new buildings and renovations had little impact.

He spoke with Tyler Smith about why different types of school funding matter and how school budgets may continue to evolve.

Nine in ten Republicans say increasing border security is important, and immigration remains a salient issue with voters entering the 2022 midterm elections.

But it’s not just general opposition to immigrants that registers with voters. The skills immigrants bring shape how US voters view them.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, authors Anna Maria Mayda, Giovanni Peri, and Walter Steingress investigate how Republican vote share changed with an influx of differently skilled workers. They say that Republicans lost votes in places where the immigrants were highly skilled, for example, in fields like health care or IT, while gaining vote share where there was an influx of low-skilled foreign workers.

Additionally, they find that if overall immigration—including all skill levels—had been cut in half in certain states between 1990 and 2016, it would have swung the 2016 election for Democrats.

Mayda spoke with Chris Fleisher recently about how immigrant skill level shapes public perceptions, the extent to which this affected Republican support, and the implications for how immigration is talked about by policymakers and covered in the media.

Only four times in US presidential history has the candidate with fewer popular votes won the election. Two of those occurred recently in 2000 and 2016, leading to calls to reform the system.

Far from being a fluke, this peculiar outcome of the US Electoral College has a high probability in close races, according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

Authors Michael Geruso, Dean Spears, and Ishaana Talesara say that regardless of changes in demographics and institutions, the odds of so-called inverted elections in close races has been about the same over the last 200 years.

Geruso says that while Republicans benefit today from the chance of an inverted election, it hasn’t always been that way. 

He recently spoke with Tyler Smith about why the Electoral College causes inversions and what he thinks about moving to a national popular vote.  

This is a rebroadcast of a conversation that Chris Fleisher had with University of Georgia professor Emily Lawler back in 2019 about her research on vaccine mandates for adolescents.

Head Start was launched nearly sixty years ago as part of the United States’ War on Poverty. Since then, it has helped prepare millions of kids for first grade.

The architects of the program hoped that putting disadvantaged children on more equal footing with their better-off peers would set them up for future success. But the long-run impacts are only now becoming clear.

In a paper in the American Economic Review, authors Martha J. Bailey, Shuqiao Sun, and Brenden Timpe found that Head Start significantly boosted educational attainment and economic self-sufficiency later in life. The returns were so great that the program more than paid for itself.

Bailey says their findings offer important insights into evaluating large-scale social programs, especially those that invest in people while they are young.

She recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the long-term effects of Head Start and its lessons for early childhood intervention programs. 

The Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a national conversation around police reform, with proposals ranging from reallocating resources to outright abolition of local departments.

Economists could help inform these discussions. But critics say existing economic research falls short of understanding the true impacts of policing on communities.

In a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Yale sociologist Monica C. Bell offers proposals for how economists can deepen their understanding of policing and public safety.

She says a good first step is to separate those two concepts. 

Bell recently spoke with Chris Fleisher about how focusing on crime limits our understanding of the way policing shapes communities, why more research is needed on community-based safety programs, and how qualitative approaches can inform research based on big data.

With advances in modern medicine, US life expectancy steadily improved over the second half of the 20th century. But that progress masked a growing gap in mortality between poorer and richer states that started in the 1980s. 

The exact reasons for this divergence are still unknown, but a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives helps rule out some possibilities and provides guidance about where to look next. Authors Benjamin K. Couillard, Christopher L. Foote, Kavish Gandhi, Ellen Meara, and Jonathan Skinner say that two types of explanations stand out. On the one hand, previous research has found numerous ways that state institutions and policies have affected health outcomes. And on the other hand, there are reasons to believe that behavior and culture also contribute to mortality differences.

Disentangling these two strands may be a significant challenge for future research, according to the authors.Meara, who is Professor of Health Economics and Policy at Harvard, and Foote, who is Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, recently spoke with Tyler Smith about rising geographic disparities in US mortality.The edited highlights of that conversation are below, and the full interview can be heard using the podcast player.

[Note: The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve System or the Boston Fed.]

The American Civil War and emancipation ended chattel slavery, and as a result, substantially reduced the fortunes of slaveholding households in the years immediately following the war.

In a paper in the American Economic Review, authors Philipp Ager, Leah Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson find that many White former slave-owning households rebuilt much of their lost wealth in just one generation, and within two generations, most had recovered entirely.

According to the authors, this rapid recovery was made possible by non-material advantages, such as social networks and political connections, which persisted in spite of the large loss of wealth.

The research challenges common narratives around the South’s recovery from the Civil War by documenting the persistence of much of the wealth created from chattel slavery.

Boustan recently spoke with Chris Fleisher about how she and her coauthors approached their research and what their findings say about wealth and inequality.

Timely publication of research in peer-reviewed journals is critical for economists seeking tenure and important for audiences looking for high-quality, trustworthy studies. But in recent decades, there has been an increasing concern that the pace of publishing in economics is too slow.

In a paper in the Journal of Economic Literature, authors Aboozar Hadavand, Daniel S. Hamermesh, and Wesley W. Wilson analyzed the publication lag in top economics journals and compared it to other fields. They found that economics publishing takes nearly twice as long as comparable fields in the other social sciences.

However, Hamermesh says that some innovative journals, such as AER: Insights, are taking steps to shorten the time between submission and publication. He recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the pace of publishing in economics, how to fix it, and some advice for young economists trying to publish their work.

DNA databases have become essential for solving crimes with few to no leads. But their benefits extend beyond finding suspects. 

They provide a powerful tool for preventing crimes from happening in the first place, according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

Authors Anne Sofie Tegner Anker, Jennifer L. Doleac, and Rasmus Landersø found that the expansion of DNA databases in Denmark led to a sharp reduction in recidivism.

While some citizens worry about potential abuse of this surveillance tool, the effectiveness of registering offenders in DNA databases stands out compared to traditional policing measures.

Professor Doleac recently spoke with Tyler Smith about how DNA registration deters crime and how policymakers should weigh the tradeoff between privacy and effective policing measures.

Austin was a laid-back college town in the 1980s when a student at the University of Texas named Michael Dell began selling computers from his dorm room.

At the time, Texas’s capital city was perhaps known more for high hats than high-tech. But the company Dell started would become the world’s largest PC maker and attracted a slew of talent that turned Austin into a technology hub.

Enrico Moretti has studied how these “agglomeration economies” develop and the ways they drive growth. In a paper in the American Economic Review, he says that inventors produce more patented research when surrounded by other top talent in their field.  

He also says that tech clusters will continue to thrive after the pandemic, despite speculation that they will be less relevant in a world of more remote work.

Moretti spoke with Chris Fleisher about agglomeration and what the case study of Kodak in Rochester, New York, can tell us about how clusters affect innovation.

Countries around the world are contemplating aggressive plans to curb CO₂ emissions in the coming decades. Many see the electrification of the transportation sector as the first step, but in a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, economist Stephen P. Holland warns against using simple bans on the sale of gasoline vehicles to achieve that goal.

Holland and coauthors Erin T. Mansur and Andrew J. Yates analyzed a range of policies to encourage the transition from gas powered vehicles to electric vehicles and found that governments may have little control over when that switch happens.

Their work shows how policymakers can incentivize manufacturers to ramp down production of gas cars while avoiding too much damage to the overall economy.

Professor Holland recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the dangers of banning gasoline vehicles and how best to transition to electric cars. 

Right-wing radio has served as a megaphone for populist outrage in America.

Talk-show hosts like Alex Jones and the late Rush Limbaugh have railed against cultural elites, promoted baseless claims of election fraud, stoked a backlash against immigrants, and questioned the effectiveness of masks and vaccinations amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

How and to what extent do these charismatic radio personalities influence public opinion? In the American Economic Review, author Tianyi Wang goes back to the 1930s to help answer this question by examining the impact of the religious firebrand Father Charles Coughlin.

Known as the “Father of Hate Radio,” Father Coughlin had a devoted following of tens of millions of listeners across the United States, who tuned in to hear him thunder against the evils of Communism, Wall Street bankers, and America’s involvement in World War II. Wang found that Coughlin’s program resonated profoundly with listeners, persuading more than a quarter of them to vote against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election. 

Wang spoke with Chris Fleisher about Coughlin’s history as a populist media figure during the Great Depression, his influence over US public opinion, and the insights for today’s fragmented media.

*Theme music in the podcast is from Podington Bear and the Father Charles Coughlin clip is from OldTimeRadioDownloads.com.

COVID-19 has reshaped work in numerous ways. Many fortunate white-collar Americans spent the last year working from home. Others in service-oriented jobs lost work or spent their workdays behind masks and plexiglass.  

These pandemic-related changes have been especially hard on women, according to a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Economists Stefania Albanesi and Jiyeon Kim found that unlike in previous business cycles, employment losses during this recession have been larger for women than for men. They argue that gender differences in occupations and in childcare responsibilities are the main drivers. 

The authors’ findings highlight the impact that childcare policies may have on the career prospects of women, as well as on the overall economy.

Professor Albanesi recently spoke with Tyler Smith about why the COVID-19 recession poses unique challenges and what policymakers can do to help. 

*Theme music by Podington Bear

Tax evasion costs the United States hundreds of billions of dollars every year. 

But for some Americans, hiding income from the government is about more than keeping every possible penny they earned for themselves. It’s also a form of political protest.  

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, authors Julie Berry Cullen, Nicholas Turner, and Ebonya Washington investigate whether attitudes toward government cause Americans to evade paying personal income taxes.

They found that when a new president entered office, taxpayers in counties on the opposite side of the political aisle appeared less willing to share their earnings with the government. 

Conversely, those who were politically aligned with the new president were more trusting of how their taxes would be spent.

Cullen and Washington spoke with Chris Fleisher about the challenges of researching tax evasion, the importance of public trust in government, and the implications of their findings in a hyperpolarized time.

For a military intervention to end successfully, foreign forces have to hand off security to domestic forces. But historically, these transitions have rarely gone well.

In a paper in the American Economic Review, political scientist Austin L. Wright examined the impact of NATO troop withdrawals from Afghanistan on insurgent violence and local perceptions of security conditions.

He and coauthors Thiemo Fetzer, Pedro C. L. Souza, and Oliver Vanden Eynde found that the Taliban held back from attacking coalition forces during the initial stages of the drawdown to disguise their true strength, ramping up violence once security was left completely to Afghan forces.

Their insights shed light on why the late stages of the current withdrawal have been worse than expected. 

Professor Wright recently spoke with Tyler Smith about NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and what the US can do to improve security transitions in the future.  

**Editor's note: This is a rebroadcast of an interview from 2019.

College sports have become big business, and everybody’s making money except the players.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association prohibits “student athletes” from receiving a cut of the millions of dollars in revenue that schools collect from games and product licensing. Instead, players get scholarships, the value of which pales in comparison to what they might earn on the open market.

But that may be changing. Repeated court challenges and bribing scandals involving star athletes have cast a pall on the two most popular sports of men’s basketball and football. The introduction of legalized gambling this year has intensified the pressure to pay players what they are worth, lest they fall prey to the influence of betters hoping to sway the outcome of a game.

Allen Sanderson and John Siegfried have been arguing for years that the system needs to change. In 2015, they published a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that made the case for opening college sports to the free market.

Sanderson and Siegfried spoke with the AEA about why they think college athletes should be paid, the potential consequences of doing so, and how the landscape could change over the coming decade.

Culture is shaped by the conditions in which humans live.

As societies modernize, their cultural traditions will change too. But it’s difficult to identify what is driving those changes and what role public policy may be playing.

In a paper in the American Economic Review, UCLA professor Natalie Bau investigated how the introduction of a formal pension system affected traditional family arrangements in Indonesia and Ghana. She found that having access to a pension led parents to invest less in the education of children who would have traditionally supported them in old age. It also resulted in more of those children leaving home after marriage rather than continuing to live with their parents, as was the customary practice.

These findings have broader implications for how we understand the interplay between culture and policy, particularly in low-income countries. 

Bau spoke with Chris Fleisher about the complexity of studying the intersection of culture and economics, the implications from her research for the wider push for pension reform in the developing world, and the unintended consequences from public policy.

Police officers have a lot of discretion in how they enforce the law, but they are not always evenhanded in how they employ their judgement.

In a paper in the American Economic Review, Dartmouth College economist Steven Mello examined variations in speeding enforcement by officers with the Florida Highway Patrol..

He and coauthor Felipe Goncalves found that nearly half of the officers practiced racial discrimination and identified the types of officers who discriminated the most. The results undercut claims that racial bias is confined to a few bad apples.

Professor Mello recently spoke with the AEA’s Tyler Smith about how economists study discrimination and what policies might help to address disparate outcomes for minorities.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of vaccines, but it also underscored the reservations and low take-up rates among US citizens.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, authors Marcella Alsan and Sarah Eichmeyer tested several approaches to improving messages aimed at boosting vaccine demand. Their main finding was that messages delivered by laypersons were more effective than those delivered by persons perceived to be doctors. 

Eichmeyer says that video messages delivered by experts who were of the same race or were perceived as empathetic can be effective for some types of viewers, but for the most hesitant, ordinary citizens may be the best positioned to dispel myths about vaccines. 

She recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the design of her and Alsan’s experiment and what their results imply about vaccine messaging.

A lot has changed since the first economics papers on LGBTQ issues appeared in the mid-1990s. 

The volume of research in this area has grown significantly. There is more awareness of an expanding array of identities and a broader push to root out discrimination within the economics profession.

Lee Badgett wrote some of those early foundational papers more than two decades ago and has been at the forefront of studying the economics of LGBTQ populations. In a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Badgett and coauthors Christopher Carpenter and Dario Sansone provide an overview of the literature on LGBTQ individuals and some of the issues involved in advancing the subdiscipline. Getting reliable data is just one huge challenge that economists face.

Badgett spoke with Chris Fleisher about how the field has changed since her seminal papers on LGBTQ economics were published, her most surprising findings from researching this paper and latest book, and how she sees her role as an economist engaged in these issues.

Can economists trust their models? How does their data drive their conclusions? These are some of the big questions that motivate econometrician Isaiah Andrews.

The Harvard professor was awarded this year’s John Bates Clark Medal for his contributions to econometric theory and empirical practice.

And while Andrews works on some of the most technically difficult questions in economics, he says helping students is crucial to his success.

There was a time not long ago when most economists tended to work by themselves. 

In 1960, fewer than one in five economics journal articles had more than one author. Today, about three quarters of all papers are produced by research teams.

The shift toward collaboration has a lot of upsides for economists, including producing higher impact papers, sharing the division of labor, and enjoying creative partnerships. 

Northwestern University economist Benjamin Jones says that there are some downsides too. In a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Jones says that the rise of teams has made it more difficult to identify individual contributions. This can muddy tenure decisions, hinder grant funding opportunities, and even expand inequality in the field at a time when economics is trying to boost representation of women and minorities.

Jones spoke with the AEA’s Chris Fleisher about the rise of research teams, the pros and cons of collaboration, and a few reforms that could help ensure coauthors are getting fair treatment.

The first private prison in the United States opened in 1984 amidst the war on drugs and overcrowding in public prisons. Now a multi-billion dollar industry, private prisons incarcerate about 8 percent of all America's inmates.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Anita Mukherjee examined the impact of private prisons on the length of time that inmates serve.

She found that inmates in Mississippi served an average of 90 extra days if they were sent to a private facility. The results undercut the industry's claims that private companies provide correctional services more efficiently and at lower cost to governments.

Professor Mukherjee recently spoke with the AEA’s Tyler Smith about why private prisons tend to hold inmates longer and how private prison contracting could be reformed.