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- 2025
- Working Paper
Extractive Taxation and the French Revolution
By: Tommaso Giommoni, Gabriel Loumeau and Marco Tabellini
We study the fiscal determinants of the French Revolution, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in the salt tax—a large source of royal revenues and one of the most extractive forms of taxation of the Ancien Régime. Implementing a Regression Discontinuity... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
A Cognitive Theory of Reasoning and Choice
By: Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli, Giacomo Lanzani and Andrei Shleifer
We present a theory of decisions in which attention to the features of choice options is determined by the decision maker's categorization of the current choice problem in a set of problems she solved in the past. Categorization depends on goal-relevant as well as... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Generative AI and the Nature of Work
By: Manuel Hoffmann, Sam Boysel, Frank Nagle, Sida Peng and Kevin Xu
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology demonstrate a considerable potential
to complement human capital intensive activities. While an emerging literature documents wide-ranging
productivity effects of AI, relatively little attention has been paid... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Lessons from an App Update at Replika AI: Identity Discontinuity in Human-AI Relationships
By: Julian De Freitas, Noah Castelo, Ahmet K. Uğuralp and Zeliha O. Uğuralp
As consumers increasingly interact with AI applications specialized for social relationships, what
is the nature and depth of these relationships among actual users, and can company actions
influence these dynamics? We find that active users of the US-based AI... View Details
- September 2024
- Article
The Human Side of the Future of Work: Understanding the Role People Play in Shaping a Changing World
By: Jochen I. Menges, Lauren C. Howe, Erika Hall, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Sharon K. Parker, Riki Takeuchi, Abhijeet K. Vadera, Ashley Whillans and Susan K. Cohen
For as long as there has been work, there has been a “future of work,” through humans’ ingenuity and drive to get things done easier, faster, and better. With the industrial revolution, efforts to shape a better future of work were dominated by improvements in... View Details
- August 2024
- Article
The Labor Market Effects of Loan Guarantee Programs
By: Jean-Noël Barrot, Thorsten Martin, Julien Sauvagnat and Boris Vallée
We investigate the labor market effects of a loan guarantee program targeting French SMEs during the financial crisis. Exploiting differences in regional treatment intensity in a border discontinuity design, we uncover a central trade-off for such interventions. While... View Details
- December 2023
- Article
What Can Stockouts Tell Us About Inflation? Evidence from Online Micro Data
By: Alberto Cavallo and Oleksiy Kryvtsov
We use a detailed micro dataset on product availability and stockouts to construct a direct high-frequency measure of consumer product shortages during the 2020-2022 pandemic. We document a widespread multi-fold rise in stockouts in nearly all sectors early in the... View Details
- October 2023
- Article
Coordination and Bandwagon Effects: How Past Rankings Shape the Behavior of Voters and Candidates
By: Riako Granzier, Vincent Pons and Clémence Tricaud
Candidates’ placements in polls or past elections can be powerful coordination devices for both parties and voters. Using a regression discontinuity design in French elections, we show that candidates who place first by only a small margin in the first round are more... View Details
- October 2023
- Article
Innovation on Wings: When Do Nonstop Flights Matter for Global Innovation?
By: Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Do Yoon Kim and Wesley Koo
We study whether, when, and how better connectivity through nonstop flights leads to positive innovation outcomes for firms in the global context. Using unique data of all flights emanating from 5,015 airports around the globe from 2005 to 2015 and exploiting a... View Details
- August 2023
- Article
Formal Employment and Organized Crime: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Colombia
By: Gaurav Khanna, Carlos Medina, Anant Nyshadham, Jorge Tamayo and Nicolas Torres
Safety net programs, common in settings with high informality like Latin America, often use a means test to establish eligibility. We ask: in settings in which organised crime provides lucrative opportunities in the informal market, will discouraging formal employment... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections
By: Rafael Di Tella, Randy Kotti, Caroline Le Pennec and Vincent Pons
A key tenet of representative democracy is that politicians' discourse and policies should follow voters' preferences. In the median voter theorem, this outcome emerges as candidates strategically adjust their platform to get closer to their opponent. Despite its... View Details
- 2023
- Article
Exploiting Discovered Regression Discontinuities to Debias Conditioned-on-observable Estimators
By: Benjamin Jakubowski, Siram Somanchi, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill
Regression discontinuity (RD) designs are widely used to estimate causal effects in the absence of a randomized experiment. However, standard approaches to RD analysis face two significant limitations. First, they require a priori knowledge of discontinuities in... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Organizational Responses to Product Cycles
By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Vittorio Bassi, Anant Nyshadham, Jorge Tamayo and Nicolas Torres
Product cycles entail the mass production of new—and often increasingly complex—products on a regular basis. How do firms manage these changes? We use granular daily data from a leading automobile manufacturer to study the organizational impacts of introducing new... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Coordination and Incumbency Advantage in Multi-Party Systems: Evidence from French Elections
By: Kevin Dano, Francesco Ferlenga, Vincenzo Galasso, Caroline Le Pennec and Vincent Pons
In theory, free and fair elections can improve the selection of politicians and incentivize them to exert effort. In practice, incumbency advantage and coordination issues may lead to the (re)election of bad politicians. We ask whether these two forces compound each... View Details
- September 2022
- Article
The Impact of Financial Assistance Programs on Health Care Utilization: Evidence from Kaiser Permanente
By: Alyce S. Adams, Raymond Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Jinglin Wang, Francis Wong and Wesley Yin
Most hospitals have financial assistance programs for low-income patients. We use administrative data from Kaiser Permanente to study the effects of financial assistance on health care utilization. Using a regression discontinuity design based on an income threshold... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Innovation on Wings: Nonstop Flights and Firm Innovation in the Global Context
By: Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Do Yoon Kim and Wesley W. Koo
We study whether, when, and how better connectivity through nonstop flights leads to positive innovation outcomes for firms in the global context. Using unique data of all flights emanating from 5,015 airports around the globe from 2005 to 2015 and exploiting a... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Electoral Turnovers
By: Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons and Vincent Rollet
In most national elections, voters face a key choice between continuity and change. Electoral turnovers occur when the incumbent candidate or party fails to win reelection. To understand how turnovers affect national outcomes, we study the universe of presidential and... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Impact of Campaign Finance Rules on Candidate Selection and Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from France
By: Nikolaj Broberg, Vincent Pons and Clémence Tricaud
This paper investigates the effects of campaign finance rules on electoral outcomes. In French departmental and municipal elections, candidates competing in districts above 9,000 inhabitants face spending limits and are eligible for public reimbursement if they obtain... View Details
- November 2021
- Article
Borrower Leakage from Costly Screening: Evidence from SME Lending in Peru
By: Irani Arraiz, Miriam Bruhn, Benjamin N. Roth, Claudia Ruiz-Ortega and Rodolfo Stucchi
We provide evidence that commercial lenders in Peru suffer leakages in their loan approval process. Leveraging a discontinuity in the loan approval process of a large bank, we find that receiving a loan approval from the bank causes loan applicants to receive offers... View Details
- September 2021
- Article
Trials and Terminations: Learning from Competitors' R&D Failures
I analyze project continuation decisions where firms may resolve uncertainty through news about competitors' research and development (R&D) failures, as well as through their own results. I examine the trade-offs and interactions between product-market competition and... View Details