AEA Research Highlights
Episodes
Ep. 95: Diversifying college applications
14 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Guidance counselors generally advise college applicants to diversify their applications across schools they believe to be safeties, matches, and reach...
Ep. 94: Targeted supply-side enforcement in the controlled substance market
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1997 and 2011, opioid dispensing in the United States more than tripled, fueling what would become the deadliest drug epidemic in American his...
Ep. 93: Technological spillovers
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in October 1957 led to a geopolitical crisis that reshaped American science policy. Within months, Congress ...
Ep. 92: Housing supply skepticism
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Most Americans agree that housing costs are too high, often blaming developers and landlords. Many feel that the problem can be solved with price c...
Ep. 91: Reviewing residential segregation
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite decades of civil rights legislation, many Black and White Americans, as well as other minorities, continue to live in racially homogeneous nei...
Ep. 90: Understanding the US net foreign asset position
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, the United States enjoyed what some called an exorbitant privilege—the ability to spend more than it earned without accumulating much d...
Ep. 89: Measuring US income inequality
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
US household income has grown significantly, but much of that growth seems to be at the very top of the distribution. Just how much inequality has in...
Ep. 88: Understanding international approaches to drug pricing
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Drug prices have become a hot-button issue in the United States, with politicians across the spectrum agreeing that American consumers pay too much ...
Ep. 87: The cultural roots of rebellion
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Civil conflict has plagued much of Africa, with ethnically diverse countries experiencing particularly high rates of violence. Yet within these nation...
Ep. 86: Reexamining air quality regulations
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Clean Air Act has been an essential tool for reducing air pollution in the United States. But standard estimation methods may overstate its impact...
Ep. 85: America's public safety net
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The patchwork nature of America's public safety net has evolved over centuries, shaped by political winds and changing views on poverty. Understanding...
Ep. 84: Media salience and polarization
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ep. 83: The returns to industrial policy
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between 2006 and 2013, China's government poured enormous resources into its shipbuilding industry through various subsidies—from providing free coa...
Ep. 82: Service quality in the financial advisory industry
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A growing number of US households hire advisers to assist with major financial decisions, such as planning life events or making portfolio choices for...
Ep. 81: Assessing the Effects of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act
20 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2017, then-President Trump signed into law the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which was arguably the largest corporate tax cut in US history. The TCJA signi...
Ep. 80: Agricultural productivity and chronic disease
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A half a century ago, new high-yield varieties of crops were introduced to India, and it transformed the country's farming. This so-called "Green Revo...
Ep. 79: Social organization and redistribution
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Qualitative accounts of anthropologists indicate that social structure plays an important role in how resources are shared in society. But quantitativ...
Ep. 78: Broader economic impacts of the Paycheck Protection Program
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
Ep. 77: The political power of historical narratives
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2005, Austria's most prominent far-right party proclaimed a "Third Turkish Siege of Vienna." The campaign warned voters that, like their ancestors ...
Ep. 76: The political consequences of NAFTA
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1993, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed with bipartisan support and near universal endorsement by economists. In hindsight...
Ep. 75: Moral hazard and migration
05 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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, ...
Ep. 74: The pace of economics publishing
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Timely publication of research in peer-reviewed journals is critical for economists seeking tenure and important for audiences looking for high-qualit...
Ep. 73: Improving vaccine messaging
09 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Ep. 72: A textbook bank run
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the middle of the day on Friday, March 10, 2023, bank regulators swiftly shut down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), arguably averting a wider panic. Comp...
Ep. 71: The roots of US innovation clusters
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Before Silicon Valley became a byword for innovation, Route 128, outside of Boston, was America's technology highway, connecting the country's premier...
Ep. 70: Counselors matter
16 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of effective teachers for student achievement. But new research suggests that school counselors may b...
Ep. 69: Testing two theories of the origin of government
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Some social scientists have postulated that governments are designed for the purpose of helping the powerful take resources from the less powerful. Bu...
Ep. 68: Ending school segregation for Mexican Americans
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Seven years before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ended the legal segregation of Black schoolchildren, California ended the legal segre...
Ep. 67: Learning the language
05 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The bulk of education research focuses on the benefits of the traditional K–12 and higher education systems, while non-traditional programs are rela...
Ep. 66: Transitional housing and recidivism
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 be...
Ep. 65: Economic questions raised by Alzheimer's disease
11 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Ep. 64: Reconceptualizing the path to universal health insurance
12 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For decades US policymakers have tried to achieve the universal health insurance coverage that many other developed countries enjoy. But despite incre...
Ep. 63: Gender bias in bank lending
16 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Around the world, female entrepreneurs borrow less than their male counterparts. Many people suggest that the reason for this gap comes down to the fa...
Ep. 62: The importance of local activism
17 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A wave of political demonstrations in recent years has grabbed headlines and helped to reshape the political landscape. But it's an open question a...
Ep. 61: Market design and live events
20 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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. ...
Ep. 60: Graduate school and mental health
21 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
Ep. 59: Mental health therapy in the developing world
23 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of counseling designed to change unhelpful patterns of thinking. A strong, evidence-based track record h...
Ep. 58: How good is popular financial advice?
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When most Americans look for financial advice, they don't turn to academic journals for guidance. Instead, they're likely to get information from fina...
Ep. 57: The costs of cultural traditions
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Religion is a deep source of tradition and meaning for many people around the world, especially those in developing countries. But religious practices...
Ep. 56: Fundraising Appeals and the Lift/Shift Question
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Ep. 55: School bullying, cyberbullying, and remote learning
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The pandemic has taken a toll on the education system. School enrollment has decreased, teacher turnover has ticked up, and students have experience...
Ep. 54: Protecting vulnerable kids
22 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Every year, hundreds of thousands of kids enter the US foster care system. And yet, improving their welfare remains an understudied topic among econom...
Ep. 53: Grade inflation and graduation
25 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Ep. 52: Just what the doctor ordered?
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1990s, drug manufacturers began marketing their products directly to consumers. Since then, prescription drug advertising has become a multibi...
Ep. 51: The returns to an economics degree
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Publicly available statistics on career earnings show that an economics degree pays far more on the job market than degrees in other social sciences. ...
Ep. 50: Comparing 911 responses
02 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ra...
Ep. 49: The great reset?
04 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The COVID-19 pandemic has already significantly widened wealth and income disparities around the world. Poorer populations suffered higher rates of ...
Ep. 48: Reframing development in Africa
16 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Ep. 47: Moving on up?
02 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 c...
Ep. 46: Money well spent
16 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The United States has dramatically increased its funding for public schools over the last four decades. Real per-pupil expenditures have nearly double...
Ep. 45: Immigration politics
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nine in ten Republicans say increasing border security is important, and immigration remains a salient issue with voters entering the 2022 midterm el...
Ep. 44: Inverted outcomes resulting from the Electoral College system
19 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 201...
Inoculating adolescents, protecting the public
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 v...
Ep. 43: The long-run benefits of public preschool
22 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 fi...
Ep. 42: Reimagining public safety research
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a national conversation around police reform, with proposals ranging from reallocating resources to outri...
Ep. 41: Divergences in life expectancy across US states
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With advances in modern medicine, US life expectancy steadily improved over the second half of the 20th century. But that progress masked a growing g...
Ep. 40: The recovery of Southern wealth after the Civil War
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The American Civil War and emancipation ended chattel slavery, and as a result, substantially reduced the fortunes of slaveholding households in the y...
Ep. 39: Deterring crime with DNA databases
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
DNA databases have become essential for solving crimes with few to no leads. But their benefits extend beyond finding suspects. They provide a power...
Ep. 38: Growth by proximity
13 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 r...
Ep. 37: Going from gasoline to electric
29 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Countries around the world are contemplating aggressive plans to curb CO₂ emissions in the coming decades. Many see the electrification of the tran...
Ep. 36: Demagoguery on the airwaves
15 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 aga...
Ep. 35: Work and childcare during the pandemic
01 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
COVID-19 has reshaped work in numerous ways. Many fortunate white-collar Americans spent the last year working from home. Others in service-oriented j...
Ep. 34: The politics of tax evasion
18 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tax evasion costs the United States hundreds of billions of dollars every year. But for some Americans, hiding income from the government is about m...
Ep. 33: Military handoffs
04 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For a military intervention to end successfully, foreign forces have to hand off security to domestic forces. But historically, these transitions have...
Bonus: The case for paying college athletes
23 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
**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 pla...
Ep. 32: How policy shapes culture
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Culture is shaped by the conditions in which humans live. As societies modernize, their cultural traditions will change too. But it's difficult to ide...
Ep. 31: More than a few bad apples
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 pap...
Ep. 30: LGBTQ economics
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 signific...
Ep. 29: Making economic tools more reliable
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Can economists trust their models? How does their data drive their conclusions? These are some of the big questions that motivate econometrician Isaia...
Ep. 28: The Pros and Cons of Collaboration
26 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Ep. 27: American capitalism and incarceration
12 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Ep. 26: Creating Africa's own Green Revolution
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
More than 50 years ago, a revolution in seed and fertilizer technology bolstered food production and economic well-being in Asia and Latin America. Un...
Ep. 25: Why the United States has the best research universities
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At the turn of the 19th century, American universities were mostly under-resourced, regional schools. By World War II, they had become research leader...
Ep. 24: Climate change and migration
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus has called climate change "the ultimate challenge for economics." Economists increasingly have been trying to unde...
Ep. 23: How much do local leaders matter?
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After a failed revolution in 1848, hundreds of Germans were expelled from their home country and settled in the US. It was not obvious that this eclec...
Ep. 22: Supreme polarization
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Democrats may control the White House and Congress, but Republicans have a clear advantage on the nation's highest court. Sixteen of the last 20 app...
Bonus: Tech: economists wanted
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are pushing today's technology frontier. And critical to their enterprises are economists who've honed th...
Ep. 21: The consquences of school choice.
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the US, most students enroll in their neighborhood school. But sometimes, they have a choice. Families might be given vouchers for other public or ...
Ep. 20: Rereading The Road to Serfdom
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Friedrich Hayek is one of the giants of 20th century economics. He did important work on everything from business cycles to psychology, earning a Nobe...
Ep. 19: Social well-being and academic success
06 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Schools are academic institutions. But they are not only that. They are also social spaces that are critical to children's development. Whether inside...
Ep. 18: The promise of conditional cash transfers
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Simply giving cash with a few strings attached could be one of the most promising ways to reduce poverty and insecurity in the developing world. Today...
Ep. 17: Gendered laws
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's well documented that women earn less than men for doing the same job. But the pay gap is just one way in which women are economically disadvantag...
Ep. 16: The anatomy of inequality
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
More and more of the wealth in the richest countries is going to their richest citizens. And there are no signs that it's stopping. But how inequality...
Ep. 15: How economists can help combat COVID-19
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Epidemiology used to be a quiet discipline whose experts were not much used to being in the public eye. Then COVID-19 happened. Suddenly, epidemio...
Bonus episode: How Democrats lost the South
30 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The GOP has owned the US South, winning a majority of the region's votes in every presidential election for the past 40 years. But it wasn't always t...
Ep. 14: Importing polarization
28 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The gap between red and blue America has been expanding for decades, and the consequences of this increasing polarization are clear to close oberser...
Ep. 13: Populism's rise
14 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Populism's rise has sparked fundamental questions for advanced democracies around the world. Perhaps the biggest question is why it's happening. Some ...
Ep. 12: Taxing hidden wealth
30 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The IRS knows that taxpayers hide a large chunk of their wealth overseas. According to the best estimates, Americans hold more than a trillion dolla...
Ep. 11: Reviving distressed communities
16 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The US spends nearly $50 billion a year on job-creating business incentives. Unfortunately, a lot of this money doesn't go to the places that need it ...
Ep. 10: What helps and hurts minorities' progress in an economics career?
02 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Black, Latinx, and Native American people are badly underrepresented in economics. In 2017, they were 30 percent of the US population, but earned fe...
Ep. 9: A century of women's enfranchisement
19 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week marks the centennial of women's enfranchisement in the United States and women have never been so politically powerful—or politically divi...
Ep. 8: Wielding charity for political influence
05 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The amount of money in politics seems to grow every year. Spending by outside groups reached a record of half billion dollars in the 2016 elections c...
Ep. 7: Building barriers
22 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Even before there was President Trump, there was "the wall." America has spent billions on border enforcement, which includes a barrier between the US...
Ep. 6: Autocracies in the information age
08 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The world has been adjusting to the information age for the last 50 years now. And so have its autocracies, according to our guest today. Daniel Treis...
Bonus episode: The gender gap in economics
01 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Swarthmore professor Amanda Bayer has worked much of her career to address diversity in economics. She has published papers about it, served on the AE...
Ep. 5: Rethinking racial discrimination
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The economics profession is in a moment of racial reckoning. A field still dominated by white men is rethinking long-held notions about racial discrim...
Ep. 4: The persistence of poverty and insecurity
10 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Few economists have shed as much light on the long-run impact of institutions as Melissa Dell. Her efforts, which earned her this year's John Bates Cl...
Ep. 3: Scrutinizing for-profit colleges
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For-profit colleges hope to be profitable again. Years of intense regulatory scrutiny over high student loan default rates and lawsuits over boiler ro...
Ep. 2: Supplying a fiscal lifeline
13 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There's little doubt that the US has entered a recession. Stock markets have been continuously rattled since February, and over 20 million people fi...
Ep. 1: "An ambassador of the economics profession"
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Anyone who has ever taken Econ 101 will likely be familiar with our guest Gregory Mankiw. The Harvard professor's Principles of Economics is in its ...