Research Brief Library

Proposed mergers rarely offer both large efficiency gains and large market power gains, because either alone is enough to make a deal worth pursuing for firms. This negative relationship is due to the nature of selection into mergers and has...

Some states govern effectively despite lacking the fiscal resources to fund a modern bureaucracy. This is true of the developing world today, but also historically of currently developed countries. Using a unique survey of English urban government from 1835, the...

College-educated mothers spend more time on learning activities with their children despite reporting substantially lower enjoyment of those activities. This enjoyment paradox is sharpest among non-employed, higher-income college-educated mothers.

Africa’s startup ecosystem is concentrated in a few hubs and led by highly educated founders. Startups demand equity, but that capital is supplied mainly by foreign investors and flows disproportionately to founders with foreign education or work experience, with important...

Restrictions on spending SNAP benefits on sugary drinks reduced the average SNAP household’s retail purchases of excluded drinks by 12.4% over the first half of 2026. In states that excluded only some sugary drinks, SNAP households partially substituted to non-excluded...

A new assessment for preschool-aged children generates two distinct measures of interest-type and deprivation-type curiosity, both internally consistent. Children’s vocabulary is associated with both measures, most strongly with deprivation-type curiosity, and the relationship is robust to a rich set of...

Behavioral interventions, or nudges, generate demand responses that are comparable to substantial price interventions. While nudges have high welfare returns at the margin, price instruments often generate larger total surplus at scale.

Generative AI has spread through K-12 schools faster than almost any classroom technology before it, reaching 90% of schools within three years. But adoption is not the same as integration, which includes the policies, training, and guidance that determine whether...

A new model abandons the usual shortcut of market clearing and considers how firms choose both prices and production before demand is known—revealing how rationing, slack, and uncertainty shape markups, productivity, and monetary transmission.

The dollar-based correspondent network offers banks in emerging markets and developing countries greater ability to make and receive payments compared to other currencies’ networks. Financial sanctions are powerful because they sever or degrade access to the dollar network, leaving targeted...