Curiosity has emerged as an essential skill for children to thrive in the twenty-first century, with organizations including the World Economic Forum and the OECD listing it among essential skills for...

What are the best ways for policymakers to encourage desirable behaviors, such as reduced electricity use or higher vaccination rates? A traditional approach points to using price interventions to tax...

Description Industrial Organization is a large, responsive, and policy-relevant field of economics. Always active both theoretically and, especially during the past couple of decades, empirically, the...

New research shows that people are strikingly bad at predicting how good it feels to connect with a stranger. In this episode of The Pie, Nick Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the Universit...

New research shows that people are strikingly bad at predicting how good it feels to connect with a stranger. In this episode of The Pie, Nick Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the Universit...

Description The US and countries around the world are spending a substantial and rising share of income on health care. The care that is delivered today and the innovation available tomorrow are drive...

Description The US and countries around the world are spending a substantial and rising share of income on health care. The care that is delivered today and the innovation available tomorrow are drive...

While the decline in manufacturing employment has received ample attention, the healthcare industry has rather quietly become the nation’s dominant employer. Indeed, the increase in healthcare employm...

Have you taken a Lyft, shopped at Walmart, or used Facebook in the last decade? If so, you’ve likely been a participant in one of John List’s experiments. In this episode of The Pie, List, Professor o...

How is artificial intelligence (AI) going to change social science and how is social science going to change how AI is used? This cross-disciplinary conference will facilitate dialogue and generate insights into innovative methodologies, novel datasets, and emerging technologies that can reshape our understanding of the world and push the boundaries of knowledge across disciplines Read more...

Residential segregation of marginalized groups is a well-established driver of persistent inequality in wealthy countries. Segregated communities tend to have worse access to employment networks, public services, and social capital, and face more entrenched stereotypes in the broader population.1 Most existing research, however, focuses on the United States and Europe. This research gap is significant Read more...

In 1992, then presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s political strategist, James Carville, famously coined a phrase to keep his candidate on message, which tidily summarizes the long-held view that voters care most about pocketbook issues: “It’s the economy, stupid.” While that assessment still holds, this research suggests that Carville’s maxim could be rephrased as, “It’s the Read more...

The latest commentary and analysis from BFI’s leading scholars in shorter, digestible forms.

This work begins with a simple statement with big implications: “Institutions act through people.” It follows that the discretionary behavior of those in power matters, and when those people, be they CEOs, judges, academic leaders, managers, politicians, and others, act dishonestly, condemnation is often swift, though some escape retribution. This is especially true in the Read more...

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Many firms face a fundamental challenge regarding employee performance: How to effectively and efficiently incentivize workers. Financial rewards are effective but costly, and their motivating power can diminish over time. In this paper, the authors ask whether status-based rewards such as medals, awards, and titles can fill this gap by tapping into people’s innate desire Read more...