The Quarterly Journal of Economics
Articles in this Issue
Who’s Afraid of the Minimum Wage? Measuring the Impacts on Independent Businesses Using Matched U.S. Tax Returns
Abstract A common concern surrounding minimum wage policies is their impact on independent businesses, which are often feared to be less able to bear or pass on cost increases. We ex...
Marginal Returns to Public Universities
Abstract This article studies the returns to enrolling in U.S. public universities by comparing the long-term outcomes of barely admitted versus barely rejected applicants. I use adm...
Enlightenment Ideals and Belief in Progress in the Run-up to the Industrial Revolution: A Textual Analysis
Abstract We trace the evolution of the language of science, religion, and political economy in the centuries leading to the British Industrial Revolution. Using textual analysis of 2...
Republican Support and Economic Hardship: The Enduring Effects of the Opioid Epidemic
Abstract In this article, we establish a causal connection between two of the most salient social developments in the United States over the past decades: the opioid epidemic and the...
Permanent Capital Losses after Banking Crises
Abstract We study the mechanisms driving bank losses across historical banking crises in 46 economies and the effectiveness of policy interventions in restoring bank capitalization....
Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges
Abstract We use anonymized admissions data from several colleges linked to income tax records and SAT and ACT test scores to study the determinants and causal effects of attending Iv...
Bargaining and Inequality in the Labor Market
Abstract We use novel surveys of firms and workers, linked to administrative employer-employee data, to study the prevalence and importance of individual bargaining in wage determina...
Digital Distractions with Peer Influence: The Impact of Mobile App Usage on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes
Abstract Concerns about excessive mobile phone use among youth are mounting. We present estimates of behavioral and contextual peer effects, along with comprehensive evidence on how...
The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006
Abstract We construct the first annual market rent and home sales price series for American cities over the twentieth century using 2.7 million newspaper real estate listings. Our fi...
Vanguard: Black Veterans and Civil Rights After World War I
Abstract Nearly 400,000 Black men were drafted into the National Army during World War I, where they toiled primarily as menial laborers in segregated units. Leveraging novel variati...
Dollar Dominance and the Transmission of Monetary Policy
Abstract Has the dominance of the dollar in global trade rendered monetary policy ineffective? An emerging view contends that if a country invoices its exports in dollars, exchange r...
Failing Banks
Abstract Why do banks fail? We create a panel covering most commercial banks from 1863 through 2024 to study the history of failing banks in the United States. Failing banks are char...
Political Foundations of Racial Violence in the Post-Reconstruction South
Abstract Election results act as powerful signals, shaping social behavior in ways that can be dramatic and even violent. This article shows how racial violence in the post-Reconstru...
Ideas Have Consequences: The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice
Abstract This article empirically studies the effects of the early law and economics movement on the U.S. judiciary. We focus on the Manne Economics Institute for Federal Judges, an...
Traditional Institutions in Modern Times: Dowries as Pensions When Sons Migrate
Abstract This paper uses newly collected data on the allocation of dowry to examine its role in resolving intergenerational frictions around migration in India. Migration disrupts tr...