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 Discovery in Economics+ (EDE+) brings together a diverse group of early undergraduate students to hone their research abilities and technical skills.
College-educated mothers invest more time in children’s learning than non-college-educated mothers, yet they report substantially lower enjoyment of those same activities. Using purpose-built survey data from 1,552 mothers of kindergarteners in Chicago Public Schools — the first dataset to measure...
In plausibly calibrated heterogeneous-agent models, marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) are highly non-linear in wealth, falling sharply away from borrowing constraints. As a result, the aggregate consumption response to a fiscal transfer is strongly concave in its size: larger transfers...
Julie Pernaudet, John List, Arnoldo Müller-Molina, Majid Ahmadi, Imrul Huda, Ajay Sailopal, and Dana Suskind
Parents play a critical role in shaping children’s skills during the first years of life. Yet, identifying the contributors to richer learning environments remains difficult due to various unobservable factors. In this paper, we combine field experiments with AI to...
Captivating and informative videos on the latest insights and trends as well as the tested stock of knowledge in economics from leaders in academia, policy, business, and the media.
Popular protests and palace coups are the two domestic threats to dictators. We show that free media, which informs citizens about their rulers, is a double-edged sword that alleviates one threat, but exacerbates the other. Informed citizens may protest against a ruler, but they may also protest to restore him after a palace coup. In choosing media freedom, the leader trades off these conflicting effects. We develop a model in which citizens engage in a regime change global game, and media freedom is a ruler’s instrument for Bayesian persuasion, used to manage the competing risks of coups and protests. A coup switches the status quo from being in the ruler’s favor to being against him. This introduces convexities in the ruler’s Bayesian persuasion problem, causing him to benefit from an informed citizenry. Rulers tolerate freer press when citizens are pessimistic about them, or coups signal information about them to citizens.
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 Discovery in Economics+ (EDE+) brings together a diverse group of early undergraduate students to hone their research abilities and technical skills.
College-educated mothers invest more time in children’s learning than non-college-educated mothers, yet they report substantially lower enjoyment of those same activities. Using purpose-built survey data from 1,552 mothers of kindergarteners in Chicago Public Schools — the first dataset to measure...
In plausibly calibrated heterogeneous-agent models, marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) are highly non-linear in wealth, falling sharply away from borrowing constraints. As a result, the aggregate consumption response to a fiscal transfer is strongly concave in its size: larger transfers...
Julie Pernaudet, John List, Arnoldo Müller-Molina, Majid Ahmadi, Imrul Huda, Ajay Sailopal, and Dana Suskind
Parents play a critical role in shaping children’s skills during the first years of life. Yet, identifying the contributors to richer learning environments remains difficult due to various unobservable factors. In this paper, we combine field experiments with AI to...
Captivating and informative videos on the latest insights and trends as well as the tested stock of knowledge in economics from leaders in academia, policy, business, and the media.
