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Moving to Opportunity, Together

When heterosexual couples in Germany and Sweden relocate, men’s earnings increase by 5-10%, while women’s do not change. Couples are more likely to relocate when the man, rather than the woman, is laid off. These gaps appear at least in...

Why Do Workers Dislike Inflation? Wage Erosion and Conflict Costs

Why do people hate inflation? Employers do not automatically give workers raises when inflation is high. Instead, workers have to fight for raises, leading to conflict with employers. Accounting for this conflict meaningfully changes the costs of inflation to workers.

What Can the North Dakota Railroad War of 1905 Tell Us About Regulating Modern Monopolies?

When the Soo Line threatened to expand into the Great Northern Railway’s territory in 1905, the two companies entered a fierce competition for marketshare in which the they rapidly constructed nearly 500 miles of rail tracks and over 50 new...

Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Prosumers: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment

Nudging energy prosumers to conserve via a home energy report reduces their energy consumption, with significant variation across seasons and times of day. This suggests that prosumers both shift their energy use away from peak hours and conserve overall.

Latest Frontier Research

Fear and Dreams: Understanding the Non-Institutional Sources of Leader Strategy

Political leaders make policy choices which are often hard to explain via institutions. We use the behavior of Colombian paramilitary groups as an environment to study non-institutional sources of variation in how public good provision and violence are combined to...

Social Interactions, Information, and Preferences for Schools: Experimental Evidence from Los Angeles

This paper measures parents’ beliefs about school and peer quality, how information about each affects school choices, and how social interactions mediate these effects. Parents underestimate school quality and overestimate peer quality. Cross-randomized school and peer quality information combined with...

Economic Mobility and Parents’ Opportunity Hoarding

Creating opportunities for people to achieve socioeconomic mobility is a widely shared societal goal. Paradoxically, however, achieving this goal can pose a threat to high-socioeconomic-status (SES) people as they look to maintain their privileged positions in society for both them...

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Oct 2
Event·Oct 2, 2024, 4:30 PM·Saieh Hall 203

Charaiveti: An Academic’s Global Journey

Seminar·Sep 30, 2024, 12:00 PM·Charles M. Harper Center | Room 3B

Fall 2024 Behavioral Economics Seminar Series

by Leonardo Bursztyn and Alex Imas
Seminar·Sep 27, 2024, 1:30 PM·Saieh Hall 203

Fall 2024 Trade and Spatial Afternoons Seminar Series

by Rodrigo Adão, Milena Almagro, Juanma Castro-Vincenzi, and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg
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Upcoming Events

Workshops·Oct 4, 2024, 10:30 AM·Saieh Hall for Economics, Rm 021 , 5757 S. University, Chicago, IL, United States, 60637

Development Lunch Workshop – Fall 2024

Organizers: Rodrigo Adão, Milena Almagro, Juanma Castro-Vincenzi, and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg
Seminar·Oct 7, 2024, 12:00 PM·Charles M. Harper Center | Room 3B

Fall 2024 Behavioral Economics Seminar Series

Oct 10
Becker Brown Bag·Oct 10, 2024, 12:30 PM·Keller Center, Classroom 0001

BFI Student Lunch Series – National Wage Setting

Organizers: Leonardo Bursztyn and Alex Imas
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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...

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