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

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: 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

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.

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

Most of the US workforce was negatively impacted by the pandemic in 2020. But as restrictions for most industries have eased up and...

Large mortality differences exist between states, a recent article by Benjamin Couillard in the Journal of Economic Perspectives....

Businesses can adjust to rising input costs in several ways. This paper explains how government policy changes and neighborhood factors...