DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

When schools close for the summer—even in the years before the pandemic—food hardship among families with children rises. But there is a policy that can help: for the summer of 2022, summer months count as school closures and all states can apply to provide eligible children with Pandemic EBT.

Poor countries should not be significantly affected by the loss of Ukrainian agricultural products. While Russia’s war has undoubtedly caused real problems in global food markets, they are different and more complex than what most news coverage suggests.

As fertility rates have declined in high-income countries, the cross-country relationship between women’s labour supply and fertility has reversed. Today, in countries where more women are working, more babies are born. This column suggests that classic models of fertility no longer explain ultra-low fertility rates in high-income countries, where the compatibility of women’s career and family goals are now a key driver of fertility decisions. The authors highlight four factors that facilitate combining a career and childbirth: family policy, cooperative fathers, favourable social norms, and flexible labour markets.

For Those Living in Poverty, Therapy Can Have Benefits Beyond Mental Health A large study suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy can also improve physical health and economic outcomes.

A patient seller interacts with a sequence of myopic consumers. Each period, the seller chooses the quality of his product, and a consumer decides whether to trust the seller after she observes the seller’s actions in the last K periods (limited memory) and at least one previous consumer’s action (observational learning). However, the consumer cannot observe the seller’s action in the current period. With positive probability, the seller is a commitment type who plays his Stackelberg action in every period. I show that under limited memory and observational learning, consumers are concerned that the seller will not play his Stackelberg action when he has a positive reputation and will play his Stackelberg action after he has lost his reputation. Such a concern leads to equilibria where the seller receives a low payoff from building a reputation.

Northwestern’s Joel Mokyr's book is a recommended read in The Economist's article, "What to read to understand the history of Western capitalism"

As countries work to expand renewable energy, Gonzales, Ito, and Reguant study the static and dynamic impacts of market integration on renewable energy expansion in Chile using two recent grid expansions in the electricity market.

Northwestern University has announced the winners of the 2022 Nemmers Prizes in Earth sciences, economics and mathematics. The biennial prizes recognize top scholars for their lasting significance, outstanding achievements, contributions to knowledge and the development of significant new modes of analysis.

Professor Federico Bugni, along with co-authors Qiyuan Li and Jia Li of the School of Economics at the Singapore Management University, have written an article on using permutation tests to detect discontinuities in economic models. The article has been accepted at the Quantitative Economics journal, and will be published in the upcoming issue.

Mass shootings have been on the rise in the U.S.—not just in schools like the Uvalde, Texas, shooting where 21 people were killed, but in places of worship, in grocery stores, and during family events like the recent July 4th parade shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, a few miles from Northwestern. And it was only one of the mass shootings in the Chicago area over the holiday weekend. In the wake of these tragedies, IPR faculty experts offer their research insights into the short- and long-term costs of school shootings for surviving students, how shootings change communities politically, and which evidence-based solutions could help prevent mass shootings.

As the U.S. reels from another school shooting, much of the public discussion has centered on the lives lost: 19 children and two adults. But this death toll captures only one part of the immense cost of gun violence in American schools. We have studied the long-term effects of school shootings on the health, education and economic futures of those who survive such incidents. Our research shows that despite often escaping without physical harm, the hundreds of thousands of children and educators who survive these tragedies carry scars that affect their lives for many years to come.

As fertility rates have declined in high-income countries, the cross-country relationship between women’s labour supply and fertility has reversed. Today, in countries where more women are working, more babies are born. This column suggests that classic models of fertility no longer explain ultra-low fertility rates in high-income countries, where the compatibility of women’s career and family goals are now a key driver of fertility decisions. The authors highlight four factors that facilitate combining a career and childbirth: family policy, cooperative fathers, favourable social norms, and flexible labour markets.

On the inaugural episode of Risk Talking, Joel Mokyr, the pathbreaking economic historian, joins Allison Schrager to discuss the past, present, and future of innovation and the modern economy.

Northwestern’s Annie Liang has received a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), its most prestigious honor for junior faculty members.

IPR economist Charles Manski and his co-author Francesca Molinari (PhD 2003) received the 2022 Willard G. Manning Memorial Award for their study “Estimating the COVID-19 Infection Rate: Anatomy of an Inference Problem” in the Journal of Econometrics.

Today, cryptocurrency seems to be everywhere. But Daniel Polotsky ’17 Econ Alumnus, right, remembers the early days of crypto — back in 2017, when “transactions” meant slapping some cash on a table in a Starbucks and waiting for a payment to your “digital wallet.” Now his company, CoinFlip, has more than 3,000 cryptocurrency ATMs around the country and was named the fastest-growing company in Chicago last year by Crain’s Chicago Business.

Six Northwestern faculty members representing three schools have been awarded a prestigious 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. They were selected for their creativity, innovation and research accomplishments which make them stand out as the next generation of leaders.

The Journal of Economic Perspectives attempts to fill a gap between the general interest press and most other academic economics journals. The journal aims to publish articles that will serve several goals: to synthesize and integrate lessons learned from active lines of economic research; to provide economic analysis of public policy issues; to encourage cross-fertilization of ideas among the fields of economics; to offer readers an accessible source for state-of-the-art economic thinking; to suggest directions for future research; to provide insights and readings for classroom use; and to address issues relating to the economics profession.

Featuring a letter from our Chair, Joseph Ferrie; Thank You to our donors; Undergraduate Spotlight on Wilma Tay, who participated in the Posner Research Program in Summer 2021; Faculty Updates; and an Alumni Spotlight.

Gather a group of economists together and ask what most concerns them, and a wide variety of topics would soon emerge: slowing economic growth in the rich nations, the inability of many poor nations to converge toward the rich, rising income and wealth inequality, the increasing dominance of superstar firms, growing profit margins and the decline in labor's income share, globalization and the human costs of outsourcing, deaths of despair, and the threat of climate change. Decade after decade, numerous books have been written about each of these issues. But here we have in one compact package a blockbuster book that deals with all of them.

Two fellowships were awarded to honor the late faculty member and AEA President Robert Eisner. For 2021-22, the Fellowships were awarded to Joao Guerreiro and Udayan Vaidya. The fellowship or fellowships are awarded annually to fourth-year students who have distinguished themselves in both teaching and research.

The Susan Bies awards are given to the best public policy papers presented as part of the Economics 501 seminar. The winners for 2020-21 were Jose Alvarado for "Tax Evasion, Heterogeneous Rate of Returns, and Wealth Inequality" and Anran Li for "Limited Commitment, Competition, and Market Segmentation in Non-Acute Care Provision.” The prizes were generously donated by alumna Susan Schmidt Bies (PhD, 1972).

The consumer welfare standard has been a subject of intense interest and debate recently in the U.S., punctuated by the 19-hour debate session in Congress in late June, the July executive order aimed at promoting competition in the U.S. economy, the Federal Trade Commission’s 3-2 vote on Sept. 15 to withdraw its approval of the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines and the Sept. 22 memo from the FTC Chair Lina Khan regarding her vision and priorities for the organization.

It's no longer a man’s world. Pundits have speculated for more than a decade about the end of men. After centuries of dominating the economy, most of the job growth is in industries where women traditionally work. And those jobs require more education. The latest piece of data is that women are dominating college enrollment. In a few years, two women will earn a degree for every one man.

Northwestern University economics professor Joel Mokyr today (Sept. 22) was named a 2021 Citation Laureate™, for his studies of the history and culture of technological progress and its economic consequences.