A Hot Air Balloon Being Inflated Takeaway This study introduces a framework using LLMs to translate qualitative business commentaries from the Federal Reserve’s "Beige Book" into structured economic data. By feeding firm-level explanations into a macroeconomic model, the authors pinpoint the precise triggers driving historical inflation surges. Key Points Listening over estimating: Qualitative text allows economists to observe why firms say they changed prices, capturing cond

Takeaway: Understanding the complex two-way relationship between gender equality and armed conflict is essential for creating effective humanitarian aid and building lasting economic stability in post-war societies. Key Points Societies with greater legal and social gender equality experience significantly lower rates of armed conflict, though proving direct cause-and-effect remains complex. Violent conflict inflicts severe direct and long-term costs on women—ranging from tar

Revealing salaries can help to reduce pay gaps, but is there a downside? Takeaway: This paper synthesizes international economic research to evaluate how different types of pay transparency laws—peer-to-peer disclosures, managerial pay visibility, and salary ranges in job postings—reshape worker motivation, salary negotiations, and employer hiring strategies. Key Points Peer transparency shrinks wage gaps, but can lower overall pay: Making salaries visible among direct cowork

Takeaway: Providing mobile phone credits to low-income adults during a crisis significantly reduces mental distress and domestic conflicts, particularly when distributed in regular installments rather than a single lump sum. Key Points Reduced Psychological Strain: Free mobile credit lowered mental distress by nearly 10% and reduced the likelihood of severe mental distress by 24% among low-income adults in Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic. Installments Outperformed Lump Sum

Why top companies pay top wages Takeaway: High-paying firms owe their wage premia to product market dominance and profit-sharing with employees, demonstrating that collective bargaining power can counteract corporate market power to improve economic welfare. Key Points Profit-Sharing Drives Pay: High-wage firms do not just have higher productivity; they charge higher prices and higher markups, sharing a portion of these product market profits with their employees. Product Dom

How Policy Choices Shape Prices, Battery Range, and Charging Networks Takeaway: Government cash rebates for electric vehicle purchases prompt automakers to lower prices but also trim driving ranges, creating a sharp trade-off for policymakers between maximizing total vehicle sales and maximizing overall consumer welfare. Key Points Unexpected Adjustments: Direct cash rebates for electric vehicles (EVs) led carmakers to produce cheaper, lower-range models rather than simply di

Takeaway: Giving one-time cash grants to extremely poor agricultural families leads to lasting improvements in food security and farm profits, even after initial consumer spending sprees fade. Section 3 - Key Points Fleeting spending, persistent food security: Initial surges in retail purchases vanished within six months, but families maintained higher food security for up to two years. Farming as an investment: Families sustained these long-term gains by investing cash in se

Takeaway: A sharp pullback in U.S. military funding for university research in the 1970s led to persistent declines in academic faculty size, doctoral student training, and scientific publications, ultimately dampening long-run technological innovation. The study explores the systemic consequences of a major contraction in public research funding to assess whether scientific capacity is significantly easier to dismantle than to rebuild. Key Points Academic Shrinkage: Academic

Takeaway: Evidence comparing jurisdictions with and without three‑strikes laws is mixed: some state‑level and quasi‑experimental studies find deterrent effects for targeted offender classes, while several multi‑jurisdiction analyses report increased homicides or little incapacitation benefit. Policy conclusions stress heterogeneous effects and important identification challenges. Crime and the fear of crime have lead many states to adopt so called "three strikes" laws. These

Takeaway: The latest data from the BLS shows that while nominal earnings rose, real earnings were flat from the same time last year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Q2 data on weekly earnings this Tuesday, showing small gains in nominal wages. But persistent inflation is wiping out those gains. For the nearly 121 million full-time workers in the US economy, median weekly earnings rose by $53 from the second quarter of last year to $1,251. That's a rise of about 4.

This study uses randomized admissions lotteries to examine how different types of charter schools affect students' long-term educational paths, revealing that state test scores do not always predict whether a school helps its students earn a college degree.

Joining an emissions trading scheme can lower a company’s borrowing costs, but only if the carbon market is active enough to give banks a reliable signal of the firm's environmental health.

A sharp increase in federal pandemic relief funds for relatively affluent school districts did not improve student test scores, primarily because districts used the windfall to lower local property taxes rather than increase overall school spending.

Monthly Import Prices Increase Again In June, But Appear To Be Leveling Off The Import Price Report for June shows that import prices increased slightly - a 0.3 percent increase. However, import prices remain elevated, mainly due to the rise in fuel costs as a result of the war in Iran. Import prices began to rise sharply in February, coinciding with the beginning of the airstrikes targeting high-ranking officials in Iran. Shortly thereafter, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz,

Prices Actually Fell In June, What's Driving The Decline? The Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell 0.4 percent last month, the first monthly decline since the pandemic, offering a tentative sign that the Federal Reserve’s inflation fight may finally be gaining traction. But the broader picture remains less encouraging. Prices are still 3.5 percent higher than a year ago, keeping inflation well above the Fed’s 2 percent target. That persistent pressure makes it likely that policyma

Details on the latest inflation numbers

Spending on new homes rose by 18.2 percent from the previous year, but rising costs and interest rates could slow down the pace of...

The House of Representatives passes the Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act aimed directly at gas prices. If it passes in the Senate,

Job openings decline slightly in April, but remain some of the highest ever recorded. By Nate Griffin - Tuesday, June 1st, 2022 The...

Home prices rose 20.6 percent in March from the same time last year, but will rising interest rates take the punch bowl away from the party?