FRONTIER RESEARCH, GLOBAL IMPACT.

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Research Briefs·Sep 30, 2026

The AGI Race and Existential Risk

Competition among firms developing artificial general intelligence can encourage them to prioritize speed over safety, increasing the risk of a catastrophic outcome. Industry consolidation, regulation facilitating commitment to slow down, and governments entering the race in a safe way improves...
Research Briefs·Sep 29, 2026

Evaluating the Spatial Consequences of a Climate Tipping Point

What Is the AMOC?  The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) carries warm, salty surface water from the subtropics toward the North Atlantic, where the water cools, sinks, and flows back south. The delivery of warm water north helps keep Western...
Podcasts episode·Sep 29, 2026

Why Your Raise Didn’t Keep Up with Inflation

By 2024, inflation was falling and unemployment was low, yet consumer confidence had sunk to levels last seen during the Great Recession. In this episode, Erik Hurst of Chicago Booth and his co-author Christina Patterson draw on payroll records for...
Research Briefs·Sep 24, 2026

How Disability Benefits in Early Life Affect Adult Outcomes

Receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) in childhood increases children’s earnings in adulthood when parents continue working (and therefore total household income increases), but has zero or negative effects when parents offset the transfer by reducing their earnings. This suggests that...

Latest Frontier Research

BFI Working Paper·Oct 6, 2026

Provider and Worker Responses to Supply-Side Audits in Social Insurance

Social insurance often relies on third-party gatekeepers to certify eligibility, but planners cannot easily verify whether those certifications are accurate. We study this problem in the market for medical sick leave using the universe of sick leave certificates in Chile...
BFI Working Paper·Oct 6, 2026

Do AI Assistants Reinforce Investor Beliefs? Evidence from Human and AI Replies

Using Reddit r/wallstreetbets posts, we compare the sentiment of AI-generated replies with actual human top-level replies to the same investor-authored posts. We find that counterfactual replies generated by a user-facing AI model are systematically more bullish than human replies. Prompting...
BFI Working Paper·Oct 6, 2026

Latent Human Capital: How Early Investments in Parents Buffer Against Future Schooling Shocks

Do early investments in parents pay off even when treatment effects for children appear to fade out quickly? We answer this question by leveraging a field experiment in which households with 3-5 year-old children were randomized into a parenting program,...

Past Events

Oct 6
Event·Oct 6, 2026, 12:00 PM·Saieh Hall Patio

BFI Back-to-Campus Picnic: Connect & Get Involved

Oct 5
Workshops·Oct 5, 2026, 12:00 PM·Charles M. Harper Center | Room 3B

Fall 2026 Behavioral Economics Seminar Series

by Francesca Bastianello and Avner Strulov-Shlain
Oct 2
Academic Conferences·Oct 2, 2026, 9:00 AM·David Rubenstein Forum, University of Chicago

2026 IOG Fall Conference

by Marianne Bertrand, Oeindrila Dube, Torsten Persson, and Francesco Trebbi
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Upcoming Events

Oct 6
Event·Oct 6, 2026, 12:00 PM·Saieh Hall Patio

BFI Back-to-Campus Picnic: Connect & Get Involved

Oct 8
Academic Conferences·Oct 8, 2026, 8:15 AM·University of Chicago | David Rubenstein Forum | Room 601 1201 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637

2026 AI in Social Science Conference

Organizers: Anjali Adukia, Alex Imas, and Chenhao Tan
Oct 9
Workshops·Oct 9, 2026, 12:45 PM·Saieh Hall for Economics, Rm 021 , 5757 S. University, Chicago, IL, United States, 60637

Fall 2026 Development Lunch Workshop

Organizers: Erin M. Kelley, Gregory Lane, and Eduardo Montero
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About BFI

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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...
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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.
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