Sociology of Wealth
What kinds of aid actually help women? A look at 93 trials across 45 countries
A meta-analysis of 93 randomized trials across 45 countries finds that unconditional cash, asset transfers, and care services deliver the largest gains for women's earnings and agency, while conditional cash transfers lag behind.
Why women inventors hit a wall when their ideas break the mold
A study of 6.2 million patent applications finds the gender gap in patenting is concentrated in unconventional inventions, and traces it to examiner experience and assignment practices rather than reviewer bias.
Do the stars really shape your paycheck? A study of 11 million German records says no
A study of 11 million German employment records finds no link between Western zodiac signs and wages, education, or managerial rank, once seasonal birth patterns are accounted for.
Error tolerance: entrepreneurship booster or societal risk?
A study of 58 countries finds that societies comfortable with mistakes tend to produce more entrepreneurs, but the same tolerance is linked to more traffic deaths, worse health, and higher corruption.
What CrossFit reveals about how brands really earn loyalty
A two-year study of CrossFit proposes that some brands earn devotion not by building communities or telling myths, but by supplying consumers with a full script for reinventing themselves.
Do we overestimate how much a raise will improve our lives? A new experiment says yes
A randomized experiment finds that people substantially overestimate how much a raise will improve their life satisfaction, and correcting that belief shifts their stated choices away from higher-income options.
A new look at Social Security’s “windfall to the initial old”
A new study tracing early Social Security recipients' children finds that sons moved farther, earned more, and retired in wealthier neighborhoods, while daughters, tied to caregiving, saw no such gains.
What the 2021–2024 unauthorized immigration boom did to U.S. jobs, rents, and welfare spending
A new Dallas Fed working paper uses administrative microdata to measure how the 2021–2024 surge in unauthorized immigration affected local U.S. labor markets, housing prices, and government transfer spending.
Why some countries embraced remote work and others didn’t
A survey of 14,427 workers across 37 countries finds that cultural individualism explains 29 percent of the variation in remote work rates, more than industry mix, GDP, density, or lockdown severity combined.
The economics of getting noticed: what a Twitter experiment revealed about academic hiring
A field experiment on Twitter found that when prominent economists shared job candidates' papers, the work drew far more attention and candidates landed more campus visits, with women seeing a notable rise in job offers.