Latest Insights

A Theory of How Workers Keep Up With Inflation

The current inflationary period in the United States reduced worker welfare through real wage declines and the costly actions workers took to offset these losses. At the same time, inflation caused a rise in job vacancies—driven by increased job-to-job transitions—creating...

How Much Does the U.S. Fiscal System Redistribute?

The U.S. tax and transfer system has become more redistributive in recent decades, not less; this finding holds across multiple ways of measuring and defining income, households, and transfers.

Unlocking Higher Education: Undergraduate Re-Enrollment and Graduate Student Lending

Why do so many students leave college before completing their degree, and how can we help them return? Lesley Turner, Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, discusses results from a mentoring experiment aimed at...

What Economics Taught Us in 2024

Americans attend church less often than they claim. Recessions can improve our health. Pesticides pose hidden dangers. And perceptions of monetary policy shape our reality. In this special year-end episode of The Pie, we dive into some of the most...

Latest Frontier Research

Large Language Models: An Applied Econometric Framework

How can we use the novel capacities of large language models (LLMs) in empirical research? And how can we do so while accounting for their limitations, which are themselves only poorly understood?We develop an econometric framework to answer this question...

The Cost of Species Protection: The Land Market Impacts of the Endangered Species Act

Protecting species’ habitats is the main policy tool employed across the globe to reduce biodiversity losses. These protections are hypothesized to conflict with private landowners’ interests. We study the economic consequences of the most extensive and controversial piece of such...

Emission Prices, Biomass, and Biodiversity in Tropical Forests

The prudent reforestation of tropical rainforests depends on alternative land uses, the dynamics of carbon accumulation of forest trees, and the implicit social cost of emissions. In this paper, we discuss and extend recent research by Assunção et al. (2023)...

Past Events

Jan 16
Academic Conferences·Jan 16, 2025, 12:15 PM

Winter 2025 Experimental Seminar Series

by John List
Jan 13
Workshops·Jan 13, 2025, 12:00 PM·Charles M. Harper Center | Room 3B

Winter 2025 Behavioral Economics Seminar Series

by Leonardo Bursztyn and Alex Imas
Nov 22
Workshops·Nov 22, 2024, 10:30 AM·Saieh Hall for Economics, Rm 021 , 5757 S. University, Chicago, IL, United States, 60637

Development Lunch Workshop – Fall 2024

Topics: Development Economics
View All

Upcoming Events

Jan 16
Academic Conferences·Jan 16, 2025, 12:15 PM

Winter 2025 Experimental Seminar Series

Organizers: John List
Jan 27
Workshops·Jan 27, 2025, 12:00 PM·Charles M. Harper Center | Room 3B

Winter 2025 Behavioral Economics Seminar Series

Organizers: Leonardo Bursztyn and Alex Imas
Feb 3
Workshops·Feb 3, 2025, 12:00 PM·Charles M. Harper Center | Room 3B

Winter 2025 Behavioral Economics Seminar Series

Organizers: Leonardo Bursztyn and Alex Imas
View All

About BFI

About the Becker Friedman Institute

The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) serves as a hub for cutting-edge analysis and research across the entire University of Chicago economics community, uniting researchers from the Booth School of Business, the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics, the...

Our Legacy

Inspired by our namesakes, Nobel Laureates Gary Becker and Milton Friedman, who believed that economics research could help improve the world, BFI works with the Chicago Economics community to turn its evidence-based research into real-world impact.

Our Team

University of Chicago faculty members and other accomplished economists set the goals and direction of the Institute.