Paper Briefing

61 new items across 4 threads · 169 screened · 34 of 39 sources reached

Sources queried this run
NBER Working Papers · arXiv General Economics · arXiv Econometrics · NEP: Business, Economic and Financial History · NEP: Econometrics · NEP: Positive Political Economics · NEP: Sports and Economics · American Economic Review · Econometrica · Journal of Political Economy · Quarterly Journal of Economics · Review of Economic Studies · AEJ: Applied Economics · AEJ: Economic Policy · Review of Economics and Statistics · Journal of Economic Literature · Journal of Economic Perspectives · Journal of Economic History · Explorations in Economic History · European Review of Economic History · Cliometrica · Economic History Review · Public Choice · Journal of Institutional Economics · Quarterly Journal of Political Science · American Political Science Review · Journal of Economic Growth · Journal of Sports Economics · Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers (Yale) · Northwestern CMS-EMS Discussion Papers · Harvard HIER Discussion Papers · UC Berkeley IBER Working Papers · UCLA Economics Working Papers · UC eScholarship Economics Working Papers

Quantitative Economic History

21 items

The Yeoman's Portfolio: Measuring Historical Risk Preferences Using Crop Choice

NBER Remy Levin, Daniela Vidart · August 2026

Recovers risk preferences from historical crop-choice records by combining a structural portfolio model with machine-learning predicted returns, a template for extracting behavioural parameters from archival data rather than surveys.

Colleges, Assortative Mating, and Intergenerational Mobility in Twentieth-Century America

NBER Ran Abramitzky, Santiago Pérez, Joseph Price · August 2026

digitizednewly digitized

Builds newly digitised twentieth-century US college records to trace assortative mating and mobility, a large-N historical linkage exercise.

From Social Savings to Spatial Equilibrium: Evaluating Transportation Improvements in Quantitative Spatial Models

NBER Treb Allen, Simon Fuchs, Woan Foong Wong · August 2026

Rebuilds Fogel's social-savings question with modern quantitative spatial models, connecting classic cliometrics to current method.

Reconstructing a Century of U.S. Corporate Bonds: Credit Risk in Historical Perspective

NBER Mohammad Ghaderi, Sébastien Plante, Nikolai Roussanov, Sang Byung Seo · August 2026

archival

Reconstructs a century of US corporate bond data from archival sources, a new long-run dataset built from primary records.

Mapping the Grandes Gabelles in Early Modern France

NEP-HIS Eva Davoine, Joseph Enguehard, Victor Gay, Igor Kolesnikov

Maps the Grandes Gabelles of early modern France, turning fiscal geography into usable spatial data on the pre-modern state.

Sailing Ship Technology, Navigation and the Duration of Voyages to Australia, 1848-85

NEP-HIS Hatton, Tim

Uses voyage durations to Australia from 1848 to 1885 to measure sailing-ship technical change from shipping records.

Minority bureaucrats' networks and career progression: Evidence from the Chinese Maritime Customs Service

NEP-HIS Hu, Yan, Maurer, Stephan

digitizednewly digitized

Uses newly digitised Chinese Maritime Customs Service personnel records to trace minority bureaucrats' careers, large-N linkage of historical service records.

Two Centuries of Systemic Bank Runs

NEP-HIS Jamilov, Rustam, König, Tobias, Müller, Karsten, Saidi, Farzad

Assembles two centuries of systemic bank runs, a long-run crisis dataset built from historical sources.

Great Depression, WWII and the College Gender Gap

NEP-HIS Bellou, Andriana, Cardia, Emanuela

Uses the Depression and WWII to explain the emergence of the college gender gap, cohort-based historical identification.

A Cross-Temporal Analysis of Redlining Language and Modern Tenant-Screening Algorithms

NEP-HIS Min, Jonathan

Compares the language of historical redlining documents with modern tenant-screening algorithms, text extraction applied across a long time span.

Economic Development in the Shadow of War

NEP-HIS Marcel Schlepper, Timo Wochner

Long-run development in the aftermath of war, on how conflict shapes subsequent growth paths.

Ethnic Wealth Inequality in England and Wales, 1858-2018

NEP-HIS Cummins, Neil

Ethnic wealth inequality in England and Wales from 1858 to 2018, built on long-run probate and administrative records.

Mining Chinese Historical Sources At Scale: A Machine Learning-Approach to Qing State Capacity

NEP-HIS Keller, Wolfgang, Shiue, Carol, Yan, Sen

state capacity

Machine learning applied at scale to Qing dynasty sources to measure state capacity, exactly the historical-extraction-to-institutions pipeline.

The Impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act on the Economic Development of the Western U.S.

NEP-HIS Long, Joe, Medici, Carlo, Qian, Nancy, Tabellini, Marco

Uses the Chinese Exclusion Act as a shock to trace its long-run effect on Western US development.

The Distributional Consequences of Trade: Evidence from the Grain Invasion

NEP-HIS Heblich, Stephan, Redding, Stephen, Zylberberg, Yanos

The Grain Invasion as a natural experiment in the distributional consequences of trade, a classic cliometric question.

Industrial clusters in the long run: Evidence from Million-Rouble plants in China

NEP-HIS Stephan Heblich, Marlon Seror, Hao Xu, Yanos Zylberberg

Traces Soviet-built Million-Rouble plants in China over the long run, an industrial-persistence design.

Italy's Long-Term Economic Performance: GDP Estimates from 1300 to 1861

NEP-HIS Federico, Giovanni, Nuvolari, Alessandro, Ridolfi, Leonardo, Vasta, Michelangelo

New GDP estimates for Italy from 1300 to 1861, historical national accounting of the kind that underpins Little Divergence debates.

Institutional Innovation and the Adoption of New Technologies: The Case of Steam

NEP-HIS Berger, Thor, Ostermeyer, Vinzent

Institutional innovation as a precondition for steam adoption, on why technology diffuses when institutions permit it.

Recovering Work-Limiting Disability Variables in the 1980s Current Population Survey

NEP-HIS Melissa Gentry

Recovers work-limiting disability variables from the 1980s CPS, a data-rescue exercise on an inconsistently coded historical survey.

Religion as Social Insurance: Evidence from the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927

NEP-HIS Ager, Philipp, Hansen, Casper Worm, Karger, Ezra, Lønstrup, Lars

The 1927 Mississippi Flood as a shock to religious participation, treating religion as informal insurance.

Trade and the End of Antiquity

NEP-HIS Boehm, Johannes, Chaney, Thomas

Trade and the end of antiquity, quantifying long-distance exchange at the close of the ancient economy.

Causal Inference & Applied Microeconometrics

14 items

Instrument Hacking

NBER Michael P. Keane, Timothy Neal, Patrick Vu · August 2026

Shows that quietly trying several candidate instruments and reporting the best one inflates IV results, with diagnostics worth running whenever a historical instrument was chosen from a few plausible alternatives.

Survival Analysis with Limited Overlap and Censoring Distribution Shift

NBER Meera Krishnamoorthy, Donna Tjandra, Divya Shanmugam, Amanda E. Kowalski, Jenna Wiens · August 2026

Handles censoring whose distribution shifts between estimation and target samples, the same overlap problem that arises when a linked historical sample is unrepresentative of the population it came from.

Identifying Policy Causal Effects from Rule Changes

NBER Ed Manuel, Christian K. Wolf · August 2026

Identification of policy effects from discrete rule changes, generalising the logic behind RDD and bunching designs.

Optimal Experimental Design and Estimation when Potential Outcomes are Bounded

NBER Peter Hull · August 2026

Optimal experimental design and estimation when outcomes are bounded, tightening what can be learned from a fixed sample.

Robust Signal Maximization in Spillover Experiments

NBER Kirill Borusyak, Peter Hull, Evan M. Munro · August 2026

Designs experiments to maximise signal when treatment spills across units, relevant wherever neighbours or networks interfere.

Designing Around Selection: Identification and Inference Under Multi-Dimensional Unobserved Heterogeneity

NBER Brent R. Hickman, John A. List, Ian Muir, Gregory K. Sun · August 2026

Identification and inference under multi-dimensional unobserved heterogeneity, for settings where selection runs on several latent margins at once.

Two Selection Problems, One Bias Term: Experimental Sign-Up Is Treatment Choice in Disguise

NBER John A. List · August 2026

Shows that experimental sign-up is itself a treatment choice, collapsing two apparently separate selection problems into one bias term.

Nonparametric Identification of Two-Way Unobserved Heterogeneity

arXiv econ.EM Hugo Freeman, Dennis Kristensen · 2026-08-27

Identifies unit and period unobserved heterogeneity in nonparametric panels without imposing functional form.

Analyzing Within-Subject Experiments: Identification, Testing, and Sensitivity

arXiv econ.EM Shiyao Liu, Junni L. Zhang · 2026-08-27

A potential-outcomes treatment of two-period within-subject designs, with tests for the carryover assumptions they rest on.

Inference for High-Dimensional Network Data

arXiv econ.EM Yuya Sasaki, Baoning Zheng · 2026-08-27

Inference when observations are dependent through a network defined by graph distance, the relevant case when units are linked by geography or social ties.

Cross-Section Estimation of Long-Run Relations Using Time-Compressed Data

arXiv econ.EM Serena Ng, Nikolay Gospodinov · 2026-08-26

Analyses what averaging or long-differencing a panel does to long-run estimates, bearing directly on cross-sectional growth and persistence regressions.

Nonparametric Bayesian Inference for Partially Identified Discrete Response Models

arXiv econ.EM Elie Tamer, Christopher D. Walker · 2026-08-26

Bayesian inference over identified sets in discrete response models, for cases where point identification fails and bounds are the honest answer.

Endogenous Selection and Spillovers: Bayesian Inference for Policy-Relevant Causal Effects

arXiv econ.EM Duong Trinh · 2026-08-26

Identifies policy-relevant effects when units select into treatment and spill over onto neighbours, the standard difficulty in spatial settings.

SAUSS: Stochastic Approximation with Unbiased Simulated Scores for Limited Dependent Variable Models

arXiv econ.EM Sokbae Lee, Yuan Liao, Myung Hwan Seo, Youngki Shin · 2026-08-26

Cuts simulation bias in multinomial choice estimation under a fixed computational budget.

Institutional & Political Economy

19 items

Where the Grass Seems Greener: Economic Misperceptions and Support for Democracy

NBER Daron Acemoglu, Nicolas Ajzenman, Guillermo Cruces, Martin Fiszbein, Gaston Garcia Zavaleta, Carlos Molina · August 2026

Links economic misperceptions to support for democracy, speaking to the belief-based microfoundations of regime legitimacy.

Cultural Evolution

NBER Oded Galor, Marc Klemp, Daniel C. Wainstock · August 2026

Synthesises how cultural traits evolve and persist, the mechanism underlying most institutional-persistence results.

Political Entrepreneurs

NBER Aaron Chatterji, Jorge Guzman, Joyce Ma, Ryan C. McDevitt · August 2026

Models politicians who build support by creating new political goods, a supply-side account of institutional change.

The Limits of Government Outsourcing: Property Tax Re-Assessments in India

NBER Esther Duflo, Rema Hanna, Benjamin A. Olken, Shreya Tandon · August 2026

Property tax re-assessment in India as a direct test of what the state can and cannot outsource, squarely a state-capacity question.

Social Clubs and Political Office

NBER Julien Labonne, Pablo Querubín, Martín Rossi, Sebastian M. Saiegh, Ivan San Miguel, Shanker Satyanath · August 2026

Traces how private social clubs feed into political office, an unusually clean measurement of elite capture.

Race and Redistricting in Local Governments

NBER Carlos Fernando Avenancio-León, Daniel B. Jones, Ying Shi · August 2026

Redistricting and race in local government, on the mechanics by which political institutions convert votes into representation.

Fortunate Sons: Elite Political Selection in American History

NBER James J. Feigenbaum, Andrew B. Hall, Daniel M. Thompson, Jesse Yoder · August 2026

Elite political selection across American history, on how family background persists in who ends up holding office.

Social Network Structure, Wealth, and Wealth Inequality Across Cultures

arXiv econ.GN Eleanor A. Power, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel Bowles, Matthew O. Jackson, Jeremy Koster, Daniel Redhead & 54 more · 2026-08-26

Tests the link between social structure and wealth inequality across many non-Western societies, extending the institutions-and-inequality literature past the usual samples.

Culture, Institutions and Social Equilibria: A Framework

NEP-HIS Acemoglu, Daron, Robinson, James A.

Acemoglu and Robinson propose a systems account of culture as a repertoire interacting with institutions, with discontinuous rather than gradual change.

Dynamics of Democratization and the Organization of Education

NEP-HIS Machielsen, Bas, van Besouw, Bram

Uses administrative data on franchise extension to trace its fiscal and educational consequences, a direct test of the democratisation-to-schooling channel.

The civil war reduced slave owners' economic power but increased their political influence

NEP-HIS Bellani, Luna, Hager, Anselm, Maurer, Stephan

Separates the economic and political effects of emancipation on slave owners, showing power can persist even as wealth is destroyed.

Democracy, Capitalism, and Equality: The Importance of Impersonal Rules

NEP-HIS Lamoreaux, Naomi, Wallis, John

Argues impersonal rules are what tie democracy and capitalism to equality, a North-style institutional argument.

Industrial policy in the shadow of conflict: lessons from the past

NEP-HIS Kelly, Morgan, O'Rourke, Kevin

Reads historical industrial policy through the lens of conflict, on how war shapes what states can direct.

Legal Institutions and the Development of Financial Systems Revisited

NEP-HIS Beck, Thorsten, Levine, Ross

Revisits the legal-origins account of financial development, the canonical institutions-and-growth debate.

Fraud Detection Without Specificity: A Null-Calibration Evaluation of the eforensics Model on Two Decades of Korean Elections

NEP-HIS Kim, Minseong

A null-calibration evaluation of the eforensics election-fraud model across two decades, testing whether a widely used detection method actually discriminates.

Ancient Epics in the Television Age: Religious Identity and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism in India

NEP-HIS Yang, Dean, Saia, Alessandro, Kovvuri, Akhila, Ahmed, Resuf, Brimble, Paul

Televised religious epics and the rise of Hindu nationalism, on media as a channel for political identity formation.

Fallow Lengths and the Structure of Property Rights

NEP-HIS Le Rossignol, Etienne, Lowes, Sara, Montero, Eduardo

Links fallow lengths to the structure of property rights, connecting agricultural technology to institutional form.

The Historical Roots of Modern Culture: Evidence of ‘Moral Sentiments’?

NEP-HIS Karalis-Isaac, Alex, Miller, Marcus

Tests whether modern cultural traits trace to historical roots, on the persistence of moral sentiments.

From the Convent to Hollywood: The Legacy of Spanish and American Rule in the Philippines

NEP-HIS Arroyo Abad, Leticia, Espin-Sanchez, Jose-Antonio, Maurer, Noel

Compares the institutional legacies of Spanish and American rule in the Philippines, a colonial-origins persistence design.

Sports Economics

7 items

Comparing Two Methods for Testing the Efficiency of Sports Betting Markets

NEP-SPO Hegarty, Tadgh, Whelan, Karl

Compares two tests of sports betting market efficiency, a methodological question about how efficiency is measured rather than assumed.

Regional advantage in rugby sevens: Is there a home effect when nobody is home?

NEP-SPO Fernando Delbianco, Federico Fioravanti, Fernando Tohm\'e, Mart\'in Trombetta

Uses empty-stadium rugby sevens to separate crowd effects from other sources of home advantage.

Risk-Taking in High-Stakes Competition: Evidence from Olympic Indoor Volleyball

NEP-SPO Dmitry Dagaev, Elina Ibragimova, Ekaterina Lodneva

Risk-taking under high stakes in Olympic volleyball, using sport as a controlled setting for decisions under pressure.

Performing under Pressure: Revisiting Penalty Shootouts

NEP-SPO Jan van Ours, Martin van Tuijl

Revisits penalty shootouts as a natural experiment in performance under pressure, including the order effects the literature disputes.

Racial Bias in Team Selection: Experimental Evidence from a Fictional Soccer Lineup

NEP-SPO Henrik Guhling, Fabian Herweg

Experimental evidence of racial bias in selecting a soccer lineup, discrimination measured in a sporting decision task.

Exploring Public Expenditure on FIFA World Cup Hosting: An Approach of Empirical Analyses

NEP-SPO Sandambi, Nerhum

Empirical analysis of public expenditure on hosting the FIFA World Cup, on whether mega-event spending returns anything.

Does a Structural Model Add Anything to the Closing Price? Calibrated forecasting, incremental information, and match leverage in the Italian Serie A

NEP-SPO Yannik Pitcan

Asks whether a structural model beats the closing price as a forecast, an information-aggregation test in betting markets.