Knowledge that Transforms

We study the effect of the MeToo movement on reports of sex crimes to the police. Using multiple empirical strategies, including a triple-difference design comparing crime types across countries and over time, we find that the movement increased reported sex crimes by approximately 10%. Analyzing incident-level US data, we find that the movement also increased arrests and had similar effects across racial and socioeconomic groups. The evidence suggests that the increase reflects a higher propensity to report sex crimes rather than an increase in their incidence. Our results demonstrate that social movements can rapidly and persistently change high-stakes personal decisions.

Current Editorial Board:Treb Allen, Dartmouth CollegeDmitry Arkhangelsky, CEMFIMichael Dinerstein, Duke UniversityWill Dobbie (Co-Chair), Harvard UniversityScott Kominers, Harvard UniversityRuixue Jia, University of California–San DiegoPaulina Oliva, University of Southern CaliforniaKosali Simon, Indiana UniversityTavneet Suri (Co-Chair), Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyStephen Terry, University of MichiganRecently Retired from the Editorial Board:Pierre Azoulay, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMarcella Alsan (Co-Chair), Stanford UniversityRaymond Fisman (Co-Chair), Boston UniversityPeter Hull, Brown UniversityTable 1–Manuscripts Submitted and PublishedThis table shows the trends in papers submitted and published over the past five years. Submission numbers declined by 10% in 2022 and an additional 4% in 2023. Submission numbers then increased 13% in 2024 and 8% in 2025. The number of published papers increased between 2021 and 2025 due to the publication of larger issues.Table 2–Status of Manuscripts by Year of SubmissionThis table shows the status of manuscripts submitted over the past five years. The percent of papers summarily rejected in 2025 was at its highest in the past five years at 67%. The percent of papers sent out for review but ultimately rejected in 2025 was at its lowest over the past five years at 24%. Acceptance rates range from 4% to 10% of papers submitted. Papers submitted in 2025 have not had enough time to accurately reflect the acceptance rate.Table 3–Decision Time for Manuscripts Sent for Review This table reports the decision time for manuscripts sent out to referees for review over the past five years. The average decision time for manuscripts that were sent to referees has remained steady, ranging from 86 to 95 days.Table 4–Distribution of First Decision Times, by Submission Year This table includes all first-round manuscripts submissions and shows the distribution of decision times in monthly increments for the past five years. This table also reflects the improvement in the journal's decision turnaround times. In 2025, 87% of manuscripts received a decision within three months and 99% within six months.Table 5–Subject Matter of Published Manuscripts, 2025This table shows the distribution of subject matter of manuscripts published in 2025. They covered a variety of subjects, but the most common subjects were microeconomics, mathematical and quantitative methods, and labor and demographic economics. Table 1.Manuscripts Submitted and Published 2021–2025YearSubmittedPublished20211,6746520221,5119020231,44510720241,63611320251,775121Table 3.Decision Time in Days for Manuscripts Sent for ReviewYearFraction Summarily RejectedAverage Decision TimeMedian Decision Time75th Percentile90th PercentileNumber of Manuscripts Sent to Referees202160%8684100118657202260%9594109137649202355%9487112144641202465%8975109165558202567%8978113139577Decision times are for manuscripts sent out for review. Percentages are rounded to the nearest integer. Data were inputed for 63 manuscripts submitted in 2025 that did not have a decision yet.Table 4.Distribution of First Decision Times, by Submission Year20212022202320242025Months to ResponseMonthly PercentCumulative PercentMonthly PercentCumulative PercentMonthly PercentCumulative PercentMonthly PercentCumulative PercentMonthly PercentCumulative Percent1626258585555666667672466462863107697632086188019821288118741197149499159369352994986973965986<1991992992981997<199<199<199199<1998<1100<1100<199<199<1999010001000100<199<1100100100010001000100010011010001000100010001001201000100010001000100Percentages are rounded to the nearest integer. Data were inputed for 63 manuscripts submitted in 2025 that did not have a decision yet.Table 5.Subject Matter of Published Manuscripts, 2025JELSubject CategoryAGeneral Economics and Teaching0BMethodology/History of Thought0CMathematical and Quantitative Methods20DMicroeconomics33EMacro and Monetary Economics7FInternational Economics8GFinancial Economics0HPublic Economics1IHealth, Education and Welfare11JLabor and Demographic Economics17KLaw and Economics1LIndustrial Organization2MBusiness Economics0NEconomic History2OEconomic Development13PEconomic Systems0QAgricultural/Natural Resources3RUrban, Rural, and Regional Economics3ZMiscellaneous and Special Topics0Derived from JEL codes reported for each manuscript for the 2025 publication year.

Televised debates between presidential candidates are often regarded as the exemplar of persuasive communication. Yet, recent evidence from Le Pennec and Pons (2023) indicates that they may not sway voters as strongly as popular belief suggests. We revisit their findings through the lens of the persuasion rate and introduce a robust framework that does not require exogenous treatment, parallel trends, or credible instruments. Instead, we leverage plausible monotonicity assumptions to partially identify the persuasion rate and related parameters. Our results reaffirm that the sharp upper bounds on the persuasive effects of TV debates remain modest.

As manufacturing firms expand globally, business services such as advertising and legal support become essential for entering new markets. Exploiting exogenous demand shocks, we document that French manufacturers increasingly outsource market-access services as they enter more destinations. We develop a theory of market-access costs in which firms weigh the managerial strain of internal provision against adaptation costs of outsourcing—a mechanism that receives empirical sup-port. Further explorations reveal that outsourcing market-access services helps explain variation in access costs related to gravity and extended gravity, affects both sunk and fixed export costs, and substantially amplifies the variety gains from trade liberalization.

We document a series of stylized facts about how firms seek to protect the rents from innovation, using a large nationally representative survey of U.S. businesses over the period 2008-2015. Just 1.4 percent of firms obtain patents, but these patenting firms account for 87 percent of R&D investment. Firms consider utility patents less important than other forms of IP protection, like trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights. Firm industry and size are strongly correlated with firms’ use of all types of intellectual property, but firm-age is not. Implications for innovation research and policy are discussed.

Court capture in developing countries is pervasive, yet its economic effects remain underexplored. We study a Chinese reform that transferred financial and personnel authority over local courts from local to provincial governments. Exploiting the staggered roll-out, we find a 7.3% decline in local defendants’ win rates against non-local plaintiffs, alongside improved judicial quality. The reform encouraged smaller non-local firms to litigate and attracted non-local investment, potentially raising GDP by 1.9%. Yet favoritism toward politically connected firms and inter-provincial protectionism remain, and centralization itself promotes less qualified judges— revealing both its promise and limits.

Counterfactuals in quantitative trade and spatial models are functions of the current state of the world and the model parameters. Common practice treats the current state of the world as perfectly observed, but there is good reason to believe that it is measured with error. This paper provides tools for quantifying uncertainty about counterfactuals when the current state of the world is measured with error. I recommend an empirical Bayes approach to uncertainty quantification, and show that it is both practical and theoretically justified.

This paper provides novel evidence on how dietary habits – a key health behavior – are transmitted across generations, exploiting unique grocery transaction data linked with administrative records. We document strong intergenerational persistence in dietary habits, exceeding that of income, and consider several channels that might explain this pattern. Specifically, we find that socioeconomic status and geography account for only a small share of the transmission. Combined with the absence of a dietary response following a parent’s unexpected lifestyle-related death, these findings underscore the importance of early-life influences and habit formation.

We study the role of war bonds and inflation in post-WWII federal elections. After WWII, major bouts of inflation in 1946-48 and 1950-51 depressed the real returns of the bonds sold to households during the war. In a difference-in-differences framework, we find that counties with higher war bond purchases shifted their votes towards the Republican Party in postwar elections. To address the endogeneity of war bond purchases, we use an instrumental variables design, and obtain similar results. Bond ownership raised the saliency of inflation, and the severe rise in prices after the war triggered a backlash against the incumbent Democrats.

This paper uncovers that input tariff reductions result in less domestic innovation, but standard models of trade ensure a positive correlation between importing and innovation. Hence, the paper develops a dynamic framework with a task-specific laboraugmenting productivity and a non-homothetic import demand system to rationalize this finding. The model implies that input liberalization enables firms to use cheaper intermediate imports as a substitute for self-made inputs, a strategy that decreases marginal production costs but also discourages firms from investing in their own inhouse varieties. Finally, the paper compares the effectiveness of trade and innovation policies in boosting aggregate productivity growth.