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.
EDE is a University of Chicago Summer Institute designed to identify and support talented undergraduate students from a broad range of backgrounds interested in the study of economics.
Neil A. Cholli, Steven Durlauf, Rasmus Landersø, and Salvador Navarro
Recent research has uncovered large spatial heterogeneity in intergenerational mobility across neighborhoods in countries around the world. Yet there is little consensus on the reasons why mobility is high in some neighborhoods and low in others. This paper analyzes a...
Samuel Chang, Andrew Kennedy, Aaron Leonard, and John List
We provide twelve best practices and discuss how each practice can help researchers accurately, credibly, and ethically use Generative AI (GenAI) to enhance experimental research. We split the twelve practices into four areas. First, in the pre-treatment stage, we discuss...
Sadegh S.M. Eshaghnia, James Heckman, Rasmus Landersø, and Rafeh Qureshi
This paper studies intergenerational mobility—the transmission of family influence. We develop and estimate measures of lifetime resources motivated by economic theory that account for differences in life-cycle trajectories, and uncertainty about future income. We identify the effects of parents’ resources...
We document very low take‐up of an energy efficiency program that is widely believed to be privately beneficial. Program participants receive a substantial home “weatherization” retrofit; all installation and equipment costs are covered by the program. Less than one percent of presumptively eligible households take up the program in the control group. This rate increased only modestly after we took extraordinary efforts to inform households ‐ via multiple channels ‐ about the sizable benefits and zero monetary costs. These findings are consistent with high non‐monetary costs associated with program participation and/or energy efficiency investments.
