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...
This paper builds a new model of financial exchange competition, tailored to the institutional details of the modern US stock market. In equilibrium, exchange trading fees are competitive but exchanges are able to earn economic profits from the sale of speed technology. We document stylized facts consistent with these results. We then use the model to analyze incentives for market design innovation. The novel tension between private and social innovation incentives is incumbents’ rents from speed technology in the status quo. This creates a disincentive to adopt new market designs that eliminate latency arbitrage and the high-frequency trading arms race.
