Knowledge that Transforms

Economics publishing proceeds much more slowly than in the natural sciences, and more slowly than in the other social sciences and finance. It is relatively even slower at the extremes. Much of the lag, especially at the extremes, arises from authors’ dilatory behavior in revisions. Additional rounds of resubmissions at top economics journals are related to additional citations; but conditional on resubmission, the delays are unrelated to greater scholarly attention. We offer several proposals for speeding publication, including no-revision policies such as Economic Inquiry’s, the use of “cascading referee reports,” limits on authors’ time revising, and limits on editors waiting for dilatory referees.

Social learning is the updating of beliefs based on observation of others. Such observation can lead to efficient aggregation of information, but also to inaccurate decisions, fragility of mass behaviors, and, in the case of information cascades, to complete blockage of learning. We review the theory of information cascades and social learning and discuss important themes, insights, and applications of this literature as it has developed over the last 30 years. We also highlight open questions and promising directions for further theoretical and empirical exploration.

This article reviews the growing literature on the economics of sexual orientation and gender identity, a field that did not exist thirty years ago. We summarize, evaluate, and synthesize the literature on LGBTQ+ peoples’ economic lives and livelihoods across key decision points in the life course: human capital investments, family formation and dissolution, and labor market activities. We identify common themes and patterns in the literature and outline important areas for further inquiry.

Recent data technology innovations, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, have transformed the production of knowledge and increased the importance of data. This review explores how data—digitized information—has been modeled within classic macroeconomic frameworks. It compares the economics of data to other concepts such as ideas, patents, and learning-by-doing. This paper also shows potential ways to model applications for data, including innovation, process optimization, and matching. Because this research area is nascent, much of the article is devoted to open questions and directions for future data economy research.

In a work of extraordinary scope and scholarship, Gregory K. Dow and Clyde G. Reed deploy conventional microeconomic theory to explain “six transitions that shaped the world,” namely, the transitions to sedentism, farming, inequality, war, cities, and states. The models they offer provide a level of clarity about potential causal mechanisms that is unusual in the archaeological literature. But we are not convinced by some of their key empirical claims in light of current archaeological evidence, and we think that contemporary economics—including evolutionary game theory—has more appropriate models to offer than the Marshallian approach taken by the authors.

Harold Hotelling (1895–1973) was a major contributor to twentieth-century American economics. The overall thrust of his research, and his view of the role of mathematics in the discipline, have so far received little attention. Based on an unprecedented examination of his work and professional archives, this article provides a thorough analysis of Hotelling’s background and contribution to economics. A self-taught economist in the 1920s, Hotelling built a research program that, despite apparently being highly technical, was primarily conceived as applied science to solve concrete social and economic issues, from spatial competition to natural resource exhaustion and public utility regulation. Although Hotelling’s research was not exempt from criticism, it remains profoundly inspiring for the twenty-first century, from both a theoretical and epistemological point of view. When we remember that he trained the greatest, from Kenneth J. Arrow to William Vickrey, his career and ideas are all the more worthy of consideration.

Social protection programs have become increasingly widespread in low- and middle-income countries, with their own distinct characteristics to match the environments in which they are operating. This paper reviews the growing literature on the design and impact of these programs. We review how to identify potential beneficiaries given the large informal sector, the design and implementation of redistribution and income support programs, and the challenges and potential of social insurance. We use our frameworks as a guide for consolidating and organizing the existing literature and also to highlight areas and questions for future research.

This survey discusses recent developments in the growing literature on the economic history of Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using novel data and modern empirical methods, this research provides important lessons for development and political economy. We address four strands of this literature. First, we present long-term trends in economic development, illustrating that throughout history, Russia significantly underperformed advanced economies, and quantify the human cost of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship. Second, we discuss studies of imperial Russia focusing on the causes of Russia’s relatively low level of economic development and the 1917 revolution. The third strand of the literature focuses on the Soviet period, explaining its slowdown over time and eventual collapse. The fourth strand documents the long-term economic, social, and political consequences of large-scale historical experiments that took place during both the imperial and Soviet periods. We conclude by discussing the lessons from this research and highlighting open questions.

In Raising Keynes: A Twenty-First Century General Theory, Stephen A. Marglin offers a provocative reformulation of Keynes’ theoretical framework, stressing the importance of modeling the dynamics of wage and price adjustment. This review explains and assesses Marglin’s argument for the possibility of a persistent equilibrium in which goods and/or labor markets continue not to clear in the absence of active stabilization policy. It also compares Marglin’s analysis with that of New Keynesian models, and shows that the two approaches are more similar than might be immediately evident.

We survey archaeological evidence suggesting that among hunter-gatherers and farmers in Neolithic western Eurasia (11,700 to 5,300 years ago) elevated levels of wealth inequality occurred but were ephemeral and rare compared to the substantial enduring inequalities of the past five millennia. In response, we seek to understand not the de novo “creation of inequality” but instead the processes by which substantial wealth differences could persist over long periods and why this occurred only at the end of the Neolithic, at least four millennia after the agricultural revolution. Archaeological and anthropological evidence suggests that a culture of aggressive egalitarianism may have thwarted the emergence of enduring wealth inequality until the Late Neolithic, when new farming technologies raised the value of material wealth relative to labor and a concentration of elite power in early proto-states (and eventually the exploitation of enslaved labor) provided the political and economic conditions for heightened wealth inequalities to endure.