Economics

Rendering of United States filled up as thousands of people

Analyzing the 2016 election: Insights from 12 MIT scholars

Experts from the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences weigh in on topics from polling to rhetoric to individual campaign issues.

October 12, 2016

MIT economist Bengt Holmström wins Nobel Prize

Holmström shares award with Oliver Hart for work on contract theory.

October 10, 2016

A new study of rural India shows that modest levels of medical training can improve the quality of health care furnished by informal health care providers. The study was co-authored by Abhijit Banerjee, the Ford International Professor of Economics at MIT and a co-author of the study, pictured here on the right during a visit to India.

Provider, improve thyself

Study shows unlicensed health care practitioners in India improve with modest training.

October 6, 2016

“Right now, the best thing I can do is live the questions,” says Nils Wernerfelt, a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Economics.

Surrounded by questions

PhD student Nils Wernerfelt deploys the tools of economics to address his many questions about the world.

September 8, 2016

QS ranks MIT the world’s top university for 2016-17

Ranked No. 1 for the fifth straight year, the Institute also places first in 12 of 42 disciplines.

September 5, 2016

Inaugural J-PAL Health Care Delivery Innovation Competition winners announced

Four organizations will partner with J-PAL North America to evaluate substance abuse treatment, care integration, social-service delivery, and patient-engagement programs.

August 18, 2016

After the financial-sector crisis in 2007 and 2008, a large portion of investments people had considered safe were suddenly understood to be risky. And yet, the ensuing flight to safe assets, such as U.S. debt, has come with its own cost.

The safety trap

Lack of secure investments is hindering growth globally, research finds.

August 5, 2016

Xian Village in Guangzhou, China, is a project under redevelopment.

DUSP, CRE, and STL Lab award $1.1 million in second round of faculty research funding

Nine grants awarded to MIT faculty and researchers.

July 11, 2016

“There are some big unanswered questions in the policy debate of whether charter schools should be allowed to expand,” Elizabeth Setren says; key among these are questions pertaining to how well the schools serve special education students and English language learners, and what happened when charter schools expanded in 2010.

An economist delves into charter schools

PhD student Elizabeth Setren brings data to bear on questions about local education policy.

June 21, 2016

Pennsylvania State Capitol Complex in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Five governments selected for J-PAL State and Local Innovation Initiative

Selected state and local governments will receive support from J-PAL North America at MIT to improve the effectiveness of social programs.

June 20, 2016

“Migrants continue to consume the foods that were popular in their origin states, after they moved,” David Atkin says.

Counting calories

Migrants pay more for their home region’s cuisine, even when on the edge of malnutrition.

May 4, 2016

3 Questions: David Autor on global trade and political polarization

Study finds relationship between U.S. job losses due to trade, and political polarization in Congress.

April 26, 2016

Seven from MIT elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2016

Prestigious honor society announces 213 new members this year.

April 21, 2016

14 people sit at round table with text on it.

Using new models and big data to better understand financial risk

Bringing together engineers, data theorists, mathematicians, economists, biologists, and policy experts, IDSS is looking at financial risk through a multidisciplinary lens.

April 11, 2016

“As you go up in the income distribution, life expectancy continues to increase, at every point in the income distribution,” Michael Stepner says.

New study shows rich, poor have huge mortality gap in U.S.

In unprecedented detail, lifespan gap shown to be large and growing rapidly.