Banks create money when they lend. We ask what determines its price and quantity in an economy without fiat money, reserve requirements, or a central bank. We study an overlapping-generations economy in which, by assumption, loans are nominal and settled...

Using online job board data, we study the key factors driving application decisions for unemployed and employed job seekers. We identify relevant job consideration sets using a network approach based on co-application patterns. We document how demographics and ad timing...

Does the compensation investors require for holding government bonds vary with their risk? We measure expected excess returns using market yields and professional forecasts of future yields, showing that they are tightly linked to a standard measure of risk: bonds’...

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...

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.

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