Latest Insights

Research Briefs·Mar 26, 2025

How Costly Are Business Cycle Volatility and Inflation? A Vox Populi Approach

Households are willing to forgo approximately 5–6% of their lifetime consumption to eliminate business cycle fluctuations and around 5% to achieve their desired inflation rate. This amount is higher among consumers whose consumption is more pro-cyclical, those facing greater economic...
Research Briefs·Mar 26, 2025

Boosting Young Children’s Math Skill with Technology in the Home Environment; A Digital Library for Parent-Child Shared Reading Improves Literacy Skills for Young Disadvantaged Children; Priming Parental Identity: Evidence from Experimental Data

Students with stronger reading and math skills tend to perform better in school and earn higher incomes in adulthood. It is concerning, then, that children from low-income backgrounds enter school with weaker skills, on average, than their higher-income peers. Researchers...
Research Briefs·Mar 19, 2025

Drive Down the Cost: Learning by Doing and Government Policies in the Global EV Battery Industry

The learning rate for EV battery production is 7.5%, meaning costs drop by 7.5% when production experience doubles. Learning by doing enhances EV subsidies’ impact and creates global spillovers.
Podcasts episode·Mar 18, 2025

Will They or Won’t They? A Former Fed Official on This Week’s Interest Rate Decision

This week, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee meets to decide whether to adjust interest rates or keep them steady.  What should we expect amid today’s economic and political uncertainty? On this episode of The Pie, Randy Kroszner, former Federal...

Latest Frontier Research

BFI Working Paper·Mar 27, 2025

The Value of Medical Innovation in the Fight Against COVID-19 in the United States

A longstanding economic literature argues that the total welfare loss of a disease comes not only from the direct effects of the disease itself, but also the costs of preventing the disease. This paper assesses how new medical innovations for...
BFI Working Paper·Mar 24, 2025

The Economics of Healthcare Fraud

Healthcare fraud imposes a sizable cost on U.S. public healthcare budgets and distorts health care provision. We examine the economics of health care fraud and enforcement using theory and data and connect to a growing literature on the topic. We...
BFI Working Paper·Mar 20, 2025

Credit Card Entrepeneurs

Beginning in January 2021, over less than two years, credit card usage by small U.S. businesses nearly doubled, interest payments rose by 60%, and delinquencies reached 2.8%. In this paper, we utilize near real-time QuickBooks data from over 1.6 million...

Past Events

Mar 27
Seminar·Mar 27, 2025, 12:30 PM

Spring 2025 Experimental Seminar Series

by John List
Mar 24
Workshops·Mar 24, 2025, 12:00 PM·Charles M. Harper Center | Room C03

Spring 2025 Behavioral Economics Seminar Series

by Leonardo Bursztyn and Alex Imas
Mar 14
Event·Mar 14, 2025, 12:00 PM·SAIEH HALL ROOM 201

It’s a Pi(e) Day Party!

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Upcoming Events

Mar 27
Seminar·Mar 27, 2025, 12:30 PM

Spring 2025 Experimental Seminar Series

Organizers: John List
Mar 28
Academic Conferences·Mar 28, 2025, 9:00 AM·David Rubinstein Forum, Room 504

2025 IOG Spring Conference

Organizers: Oeindrila Dube, Roger Myerson, Torsten Persson, and Francesco Trebbi
Mar 28
Workshops·Mar 28, 2025, 12:30 PM·Saieh Hall for Economics, Rm 021 , 5757 S. University, Chicago, IL, United States, 60637

Development Lunch Workshop – Spring 2025

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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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