The lump-of-labor fallacy has been called one of the “best known fallacies in economics.” It is widely cited in disparagement of policies for reducing the standard hours of work, yet the authenticity of the fallacy claim is questionable, and explanations of it are inconsistent and...

Summary Assessing the impact of policy-oriented research is fraught with methodological difficulties ranging from attributing influence on policy change to constructing an appropriate counterfactual. The six case studies in this special section address these challenges in the context of...