In a piece for The Huffington Post, Jon Hartley writes about The Billion Prices Project, an initiative started by Profs. Roberto Rigobon and Alberto Cavallo to measure daily inflation. “The BPP daily inflation indices cover more than 70 countries and use daily price fluctuations of over five million items sold in over 300 online retailers,” Hartley explains.
Prof. Nikhil Agarwal has found that a lack of positions at prestigious institutions leads to low salaries among medical residents, reports Angela Chen for The Wall Street Journal. Agarwal found that, "applicants are willing to pay an 'implicit tuition'...to have a prestigious and high-demand residency."
In the first of a series of conversations, Professor Emeritus Robert Solow speaks with Paul Solman of PBS NewsHour about the past week’s economics news. Solow and Solman discuss recent fluctuations in the stock market, Federal Reserve interest rates and the response to the Greek debt crisis.
For his work developing pricing models, Prof. Stephen Ross has been awarded the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, Reuters reports. The Center for Financial Studies, which awards the prize, said that, "Ross’s models have changed and advanced economic practice profoundly.”
In an article for The New York Times, Paul Krugman examines how MIT-educated economists came to assume such a prominent position in policy-making today. “Analytically, empirically, the MIT style has had an astonishing triumph,” writes Krugman.
Prof. David Autor discusses his research showing that while automation is impacting middle-skill jobs, there has been an increase in high and low-skill jobs. While machines are entering the workplace, Autor believes that often they are serving “as tools to make humans more productive, not replace them,” explains Wall Street Journal reporter Timothy Aeppel.
Wall Street Journal reporter Timothy Aeppel spoke with faculty members across the Institute about how advances in automation could impact the labor market. Aeppel notes that MIT economists and roboticists meet regularly to gain a better interdisciplinary view of the current state of automation.
Research by Professor Zeynep Ton might explain why it is in the interest of businesses such as Wal-Mart to boost employee wages, writes Chris Matthews for Fortune. Higher pay “encourages workers to give better customer service and makes them less likely to leave,” writes Matthews.
MIT researchers have found that few health care studies use the random assignment method, considered to be the gold standard in scientific research, reports U.S. News & World Report. The researchers “analyzed hundreds of studies about improving health care and found that only 18 percent of those conducted in the United States used the random assignment method.”
A new study by Prof. Amy Finkelstein found that few health care system studies used the random assignment method, considered the gold standard for scientific research, reports Sabrina Tavernise for The New York Times. “The beauty of randomization is that it allows you to be sure of the cause,” says Finkelstein of the importance of using the method.
A paper co-authored by Professor Daron Acemoglu has raised questions about a new theory that inequality increases when the return on capital exceeds the rate of growth, reports Angela Chen for The Wall Street Journal. Acemoglu contends that the new model fails to account for political institutions and technology.
In an article for MedPage Today, Shara Yurkiewicz writes about a new MIT study showing that high demand for desirable medical residencies keeps salaries low. Prof. Nikhil Agarwal explains that, “even if salary negotiation was allowed, the salaries of medical residents would be quite low compared with physician assistants or nurse practitioners.”
BBC News reporter Peter Day writes about Prof. Lily Fang’s research examining why stocks and shares traditionally do not perform well in September. Day explains that Fang and her colleagues found that “financial markets - so praised for their efficiency - get less efficient in the summer because people are not paying sufficient attention to what is going on.”
A study by co-authored by a team of MIT economists found that financial aid boosts enrollment and persistence, reports Inside Higher Ed. The researchers found that “the effects of the aid in encouraging enrollment and boosting persistence were especially pronounced among nonwhite students and students with lower grade point averages and standardized test scores.”
Shana Lebowitz writes for Forbes about a study co-authored by Dr. Sara Ellison that determined that gender-diverse teams are more productive than their single-gender counterparts: “[R]esearchers estimated that transitioning from a single-gender office to an office evenly split between men and women would translate to a whopping 41% revenue gain.”