We measure trends in affective polarization in nine OECD countries over the past four decades. The US experienced the largest increase in polarization over this period. Three countries experienced a smaller increase in polarization. Five countries experienced a decrease in polarization. These...

We propose a model of empirical science in which an analyst makes a report to an audience after observing some data. Agents in the audience may differ in their beliefs or objectives, and may therefore update or act differently following a given report. We contrast the proposed model with a...

We use detailed data from a large retail panel to study the effect of participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on the composition and nutrient content of foods purchased for at-home consumption. We find that the effect of SNAP participation is small relative to the...

We propose a way to formalize the relationship between descriptive analysis and structural estimation. A researcher reports an estimate ĉ of a structural quantity of interest c that is valid under some models. The researcher also reports descriptive statistics γ̂ that estimate features γ of...

We study the problem of learning about the slope of a linear relationship between an outcome (e.g., quantity) and an input (e.g., price) when the outcome is subject to time-varying, unobserved economic shocks. We show that restrictions on the absolute magnitude of the economic shocks are...

We use individual and aggregate data to ask how the Internet is changing the ideological segregation of the American electorate. Focusing on online news consumption, offline news consumption, and face-to-face social interactions, we define ideological segregation in each domain using standard...

We use new data on entries and exits of US daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation, party vote shares, and electoral competitiveness. Our identification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding...

The controversy over whether and how much to charge for health products in the developing world rests, in part, on whether higher prices can increase use, either by targeting distribution to high-use households (a screening effect), or by stimulating use psychologically through a sunk-cost...

We construct a new index of media slant that measures whether a news outlet.s language is more similar to that of a congressional Republican or Democrat. We apply the measure to study the market forces that determine political con- tent in the news. We estimate a model of newspaper demand that...

We showed 10-second, silent video clips of unfamiliar gubernatorial debates to a group of experimental participants and asked them to predict the election outcomes. The participants' predictions explain more than 20 percent of the variation in the actual two-party vote share across the 58...