Latest Insights

Podcasts episode·Jul 22, 2025

Decoding Educational Content: A Computational Comparison Between Public and Religious School Textbooks

Textbooks don’t just teach facts, they shape how children understand the world and their place in it. In this episode, UChicago economist Anjali Adukia discusses her study of textbooks across public schools, religious private schools, and homeschools. Using advanced AI...
Research Briefs·Jul 17, 2025

The Local Root of Wage Inequality

High-paying jobs concentrate in large cities while low-paying jobs exist everywhere, creating higher wages but greater within-city inequality. Over time, all workers in big cities are net winners as they benefit from steeper career ladders.
Research Briefs·Jul 16, 2025

Innovator Networks Within the Firm and the Quality of Innovation

Employees with more direct collaborators produce higher quality ideas, while those who bridge different groups face short-term costs but create valuable spillovers for colleagues. Remote work significantly disrupts these innovation networks.
Research Briefs·Jul 9, 2025

Measuring Markets for Network Goods

Users value apps like Instagram and YouTube more when TikTok is collectively banned than when TikTok is individually deactivated, suggesting the importance of accounting for network effects when defining markets.

Latest Frontier Research

BFI Working Paper·Jul 21, 2025

The Benefits of Scholastic Athletics

This paper uses longitudinal data to study the benefits of participation in scholastic athletics starting with high school participation and continuing with college athletics, including the benefits of intramural athletics. We study the impact of participation on a number of...
BFI Working Paper·Jul 17, 2025

Moment Restrictions for Nonlinear Panel Data Models with Feedback

Many panel data methods, while allowing for general dependence between covariates and time-invariant agent-specific heterogeneity, place strong a priori restrictions on feedback: how past outcomes, covariates, and heterogeneity map into future covariate levels. Ruling out feed-back entirely, as often occurs...
BFI Working Paper·Jul 17, 2025

Debt and Assets

We examine the importance of corporate assets in supporting debt. Prior studies typically see only secured debt as asset backed, while the rest is deemed cash flow based. This implies only a small fraction of US debt is asset backed....

Past Events

Seminar·May 30, 2025, 1:30 PM·Harper C05

Spring 2025 Trade and Spatial Afternoons Seminar Series

by Rodrigo Adão, Milena Almagro, Juanma Castro-Vincenzi, and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg
Jul 9
Academic Conferences·Jul 9, 2025, 9:00 AM·University of Chicago Booth School. One Bartholomew Close Barts Square, London EC1A 7BL

The Safer Streets Mission: Causes, Solutions and Next Steps to Reducing Violence

by Jens Ludwig
Seminar·May 9, 2025, 1:30 PM·Harper C05

Spring 2025 Trade and Spatial Afternoons Seminar Series

by Rodrigo Adão, Milena Almagro, Juanma Castro-Vincenzi, and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg
View All

Upcoming Events

Aug 21
Academic Conferences·Aug 21, 2025, 9:00 AM·David Rubenstein Forum

2025 Women in Empirical Microeconomics Conference

Organizers: Pauline Carry, Renata Gaineddenova, Elisa Jácome, Virginia Minni, and Manasvini Singh
Aug 27
Academic Conferences·Aug 27, 2025, 9:00 AM

Economic Theory Conference X

Organizers: Agathe Pernoud and Frank Yang
Sep 12
Academic Conferences·Sep 12, 2025, 9:00 AM·University of Chicago David Rubenstein Forum |6th Floor 1201 E 60th St, Chicago, IL, 60637

2025 Chicago-Princeton Conference on Spatial Economics

Organizers: Pablo Fajgelbaum, Eduardo Morales, Stephen Redding, and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg
View All

About BFI

About

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...
About

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.
About

Contact

Get in touch with us.