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.
The Predoctoral Research in Economics Program (PREP) is intended to serve as a bridge between college and graduate school for students interested in empirical economics. The program offers unique research and professional training opportunities at the University of Chicago.
Expanding Diversity in Economics+ (EDE+) brings together a diverse group of early undergraduate students to hone their research abilities and technical skills.
Lubos Pastor, Robert F. Stambaugh, and Lucian A. Taylor
We review the literature on sustainable investing, focusing on financial effects. First, we examine the effects of investor tastes on portfolio tilts and asset prices in a simple equilibrium setting. We establish novel connections, including a direct relation between the...
John Eric Humphries, Scott Nelson, Dam Linh Nguyen, Winnie van Dijk, and Dan Waldinger
Recent research has documented the prevalence and consequences of evictions in the United States, but our understanding of the drivers of eviction and the scope for policy to reduce evictions remains limited. We use novel lease-level ledger data from high-eviction...
Aslihan Asil, Paulo Ramos, Amanda Starc, and Thomas Wollmann
A rollup is a series of acquisitions through which a financial sponsor consolidates ownership. Increasingly, this strategy is shaping economically important markets, but historically, it has escaped antitrust enforcement. We study this phenomenon in the anesthesia industry, site of the...
What Middle-Income Countries Can Learn from America’s Innovation System
Somik Lall and Ufuk Akcigit
The American model of innovation has long been the envy of the world. From the garage tinkerers of Silicon Valley...
Topics:
Technology & Innovation
Podcast Jul 3, 2024
Using Cellphone Data to Observe Religious Worship in the United States
Tess Vigeland and Devin Pope
Using Cellphone Data to Observe Religious Worship in the United States What do location data from roughly 2.1 million cellphones...
Topics:
Technology & Innovation
Research Briefs·May 17, 2024
Gaining Steam: Incumbent Lock-in and Entrant Leapfrogging
Anders Humlum and Richard Hornbeck
The adoption of new technologies can be slowed if companies become locked into alternatives that are cheaper at the outset....
Topics:
Technology & Innovation
Podcast Feb 20, 2024
Closing the Achievement Gap: Is There an App for That?
Tess Vigeland and Ariel Kalil
Children whose parents have college degrees are often more skilled readers than children whose parents didn’t attend college. In this...
Topics:
Early Childhood Education, Technology & Innovation
Research Briefs·Oct 23, 2023
From Transcripts to Insights: Uncovering Corporate Risks Using Generative AI
Alex G. Kim, Maximilian Muhn, and Valeri Nikolaev
ChatGPT generates measures of corporations’ exposure to risks that outperform existing measures in predicting firm-level stock market volatility and firms’...
Topics:
Technology & Innovation
Research Briefs·Aug 10, 2023
ChatGPT and Corporate Policies
Manish Jha, Jialin Qian, Michael Weber, and Baozhong Yang
Investment scores generated by ChatGPT using conference call transcripts are strongly predictive of companies’ future capital expenditures for up to...
Topics:
Technology & Innovation
Research Briefs·May 4, 2023
Bloated Disclosures: Can ChatGPT Help Investors Process Information?
Alex G. Kim, Maximilian Muhn, and Valeri Nikolaev
Using GPT to summarize corporate disclosures results in summaries that are shorter and more informative than the originals. “Bloated” disclosures...
Topics:
Technology & Innovation
Research Briefs·May 4, 2023
How Important Is Corporate Governance? Evidence from Machine Learning
Ian D. Gow, David F. Larcker, and Anastasia A. Zakolyukina
Little support exists for a strong causal relation between corporate governance and firm outcomes, which are rather driven by such...
Topics:
Technology & Innovation
Podcast Mar 21, 2023
Social Media Algorithms: How You’re Curating a Biased News Feed
Tess Vigeland and Sendhil Mullainathan
Social media behaviors, moving at an ever faster pace, may not reflect what users really want, according to new research...
