We exploit a rich administrative panel data-set for cohorts of Economics students at a UK university in order to identify causal effects of class absence on student performance. We utilise the panel properties of the data to control for unobserved heterogeneity across students and hence for...

Suppose an agency awards a fixed number of prizes to applicants in different categories such that the applicant-to-winner ratio is constant by category. It is demonstrated in a simple theoretical model that the number of awards in a category will typically be positively related to the degree of...

The balance between the right to privacy and the right to freedom of information is altered when scientific research comes into play, because of its inherent needs and societal function. This paper argues that, for research purposes, microdata should be characterised as a public good. The...

This paper reviews the problems and potential benefits of integrating personality psychology into economics. Economists have much to learn from and contribute to personality psychology. -- personality psychology ; behavioral economics ; identification ; causality

In this essay I review Sylvia Nasar's long awaited new history of economics, Grand Pursuit. I describe how the book is an economic history of the period from 1850-1950, with distinguished economists' stories inserted in appropriate places. Nasar's goal is to show how economists work, but also to...

Replication studies are considered a hallmark of good scientific practice. Yet they are treated among researchers as an ideal to be professed but not practiced. To provide incentives and favorable boundary conditions for replication practice, the main stakeholders need to be aware of what drives...

In this paper, we first document trends in the gender composition of academic economists over the past 25 years, the extent to which these trends encompass the most elite departments, and how women's representation across fields of study within economics has changed. We then review the recent...

Using the EconLit dissertation database and large-scale algorithmic methods that identify author demographics from names, we investigate the connection between the gender of economics dissertators and dissertation topics. Despite stagnation in the share of women among economics Ph.D.s in recent...

This paper examines the effects of the Working Families' Tax Credit (WFTC) on couples in Britain. We develop a simple model of household decisions which explicitly accounts for the role played by the tax and benefit system. Its main implications are then tested using panel data from the British...