We review recent advances in the literature on news consumption. We first provide an overview of different empirical techniques to measure news consumption, including browser data, TV viewership data, and survey-based measures. We also discuss the pros and cons of these different techniques. We...

For most decisions, we rely on information encountered over the course of days, months or years. We consume this information in various forms, including abstract summaries of multiple data points – statistics – and contextualized anecdotes about individual instances – stories. This paper...

Countries across Europe have struggled in recent decades to prevent secessionist movements, win wide support for social safety nets, and tackle problems demanding collective action. This column argues that to accomplish such goals requires a sense of shared, national identity. Exploiting a...

We study the effects of monetary policy on aggregate consumption combining a heterogeneous agent model with measured expectations under different policy counterfactuals. We express the consumption of non-hand-to-mouth households as a function of expectations only and elicit all expectations...

Widespread misperceptions shape attitudes on key societal topics, such as climate change and the recent pandemic. These belief distortions are puzzling in contexts where accurate statistical information is broadly available and attended to. This column argues that the nature of human memory may...

How do households adjust their spending behavior in response to changes in home price expectations? We conduct a field experiment with a sample of Americans that links survey data on home price expectations to actual spending behaviour as measured in a rich home-scanner dataset. In the...

Individuals might experience negative utility from not consuming a popular product. For example, being inactive on social media can lead to social exclusion or not owning luxury brands can be associated with having a low social status. We show that, in the presence of such spillovers to...

Attention to the economy plays a key role in canonical macro models, yet its empirical properties are not well understood. We collect novel measures of attention to the economy based on open-ended survey questions. Our measures are included in tailored panel surveys of German firms and...

We provide evidence on the dynamics, drivers, and consequences of attention to the macroeconomy using tailored panel surveys of German firms and households. Draw-ing on novel measures of attention based on open-ended questions collected before and during a historic shock to inflation, we...

For many decisions, people rely on information received from others by word of mouth. How does the process of verbal transmission distort economic information? In our experiments, participants listen to audio recordings containing economic forecasts and are paid to accurately transmit the...