We survey the empirical literature in economics on the impact of media technologies on social capital. Guided by a simple model of information and collective action, we cover a range of different outcomes related to social capital—from social and political participation to interpersonal trust—in its benign and destructive manifestations. The impact...
Published in Annual Review of Economics
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is one of the most important reforms of the US health insurance system since the introduction of Medicare. Because employment is a main source of health insurance for the working-age population in the USA, this sweeping health insurance reform has also had important implications for the labor market and the macro econo...
Published in Annual Review of Economics
Reducing global poverty and addressing climate change and other environmental crises are among the most important challenges facing humanity today. This review discusses one way in which these problems are intertwined: how economic development affects the environment. I synthesize recent micro-empirical research on the environmental effects of econ...
Published in Annual Review of Economics
We review the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on inequalities in education, the labor market, household living standards, mental health, and wealth in the United Kingdom. The pandemic has pushed up inequalities on several dimensions. School closures, in particular, disrupted the learning of poorer children, leading to lower attainment. Mental heal...
Published in Annual Review of Economics
Many firms, banks, or other economic agents embedded in a network of codependencies may experience a contemporaneous, sharp drop in functionality or productivity following a shock—even if that shock is localized or moderate in magnitude. We offer an extended review of motivating evidence that such fragility is a live concern in supply networks and ...
Published in Annual Review of Economics
Debt in emerging markets and developing economies is at its highest level in half a century. In about 9 in 10 emerging markets and developing economies, debt is higher now than it was in 2010, and in half of the emerging markets and developing economies, debt is more than 30 percentage points of GDP higher than in 2010. This article reviews a menu ...
Published in Annual Review of Economics
Children's experiences during early childhood are critical for their cognitive and socioemotional development, two key dimensions of human capital. However, children from low-income backgrounds often grow up lacking stimulation and basic investments, which leads to developmental deficits that are difficult, if not impossible, to reverse later in li...
Published in Annual Review of Economics
We review the fast-growing work on salience and economic behavior. Psychological research shows that salient stimuli attract human attention bottom up due to their high contrast with surroundings, their surprising nature relative to recalled experiences, or their prominence. The Bordalo, Gennaioli & Shleifer (2012, 2013b, 2020) models of salience s...
Published in Annual Review of Economics
The Brexit vote precipitated the unraveling of the United Kingdom's membership in the world's deepest economic integration agreement. This article reviews evidence on the realized economic effects of Brexit. The 2016 Brexit referendum changed expectations about future UK–EU relations. Studying its consequences provides new insights regarding the ec...
Published in Annual Review of Economics
We review the different meanings of helicopter money, both in the literature and in the public debate around it, and we clarify the conditions under which helicopter money can have an impact on real activity. To do so, we set out a simple model that encapsulates a number of potential channels of policy transmission. The model provides a taxonomy of...
