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...
We document that monetary policy has a substantial impact on innovation activities. After a tightening shock of 100 basis points, research and development (R&D) spending declines by about 1 to 3 percent and venture capital (VC) investment declines by about 25 percent in the following 1 to 3 years. Patenting in important technologies, as well as a patent-based aggregate innovation index, declines by up to 9 percent in the following 2 to 4 years. Based on previous estimates of the sensitivity of output to innovation activities, these magnitudes imply that output could be 1 percent lower after another 5 years. Monetary policy can influence innovation activities by changing aggregate demand and correspondingly the profitability of innovation, and by changing financial market conditions. Both channels appear relevant in the data. Our findings suggest that monetary policy may affect the productive capacity of the economy in the longer term, in addition to the well-recognized near-term effects on economic outcomes.
