Economics

Not Everyone Agreed With Alberto Alesina, but Nobody Could Ignore the Work He Did

Harvard professor Jeffry Fridel was a friend and a colleague of Alberto Alesina. They shared the beginning of their careers, a house (for a...

Indecent Proposals in Economics: The Moral Problem With Randomized Trial Experiments

The advent of field Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) has made it more acceptable for applied economists to collect data in developing countries. This raises...

Stick, Carrot, and Evergreen Loans: A Policy Proposal to Save Small and Medium-Sized Firms

Restaurant owners, retailers, and the like employ more than 50 percent of the US workforce, yet neither have cash buffers nor access to Federal Reserve support. In...

A New Capitalisn't Episode: Did the Economists of the '60s and '70s Ruin the Economy?

Are economists to blame for our current state of affairs? That's the argument Binyamin Appelbaum makes in his book "The Economists' Hour." In this...

Do Top Economics Journals Hold Female-Authored Papers to Higher Standards?

Articles written by male economists are cited less than articles published by women in the same journals, a new study on gender and quality...

Corporations and the Rise of the Chicago Law and Economics Movement

From its birth in 1946 onward, corporations made possible and crucially supported the rise of the Chicago law and economics movement. Aaron Director,...

Fighting Poverty With Field Experiments: the Nobel Laureates' Revolution

As a student, Harvard Business School professor Vincent Pons decided to become an economist after a project in Morocco with Esther Duflo. The co-recipient...

Economics’ Lack of Interest in Gender Proves: the “Dismal Science” Really Is Dismal

Economists are still in the dark about the role of gender. For economics to be credible, we have to recognize that our knowledge is...

Standard Oil and Antitrust: the Effects of Aaron Director's Socratic Method

Aaron Director, who died 15 years ago, made important contributions to the analysis of business practices. None were ever published under his name. Professor...

Call for Papers: Academic Lobbying

Ahead of our fourth annual Theory of the Firm conference, we are soliciting papers dedicated to the topic of academic lobbying.     Three years ago,...

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