Econometrica is pleased to announce the 2026 Haavelmo Prize for the best econometrics paper, awarded to Ulrich K. Müller and Mark W. Watson for “Spatial Unit Roots and Spurious Regression.”
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Econometrica is pleased to announce the 2026 Frisch Medal for the best applied paper, awarded to Adrien Bilal, Niklas Engbom, Simon Mongey, and Giovanni L. Violante for “Firm and Worker Dynamics in a Frictional Labor Market.”
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Econometrica is pleased to announce the 2026 Arrow Prize for the best economic theory paper, awarded to Weijie Zhong for “Optimal Dynamic Information Acquisition.”
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After Citizens United, Super PAC spending surged. I estimate a multistage model of U.S. congressional elections and find that offsetting spending responses limit net equilibrium effects. Still, amplified donor influence can reshape the electoral landscape. buff.ly/MJ48u5H

Econometrica Volume 94, Issue 2 (March 2026) is now online
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How does agricultural policy shape climate damages? @allanhsiao.bsky.social, Jacob Moscona, and Karthik Sastry show that governments move to protect consumers when extreme heat causes food shortages, redistributing damages within and across countries. buff.ly/QqnRwi0

What happens when workers with specific skills change fields? This paper shows that many workers with apprenticeships work outside their training occupation and face sizable mismatch penalties. Retraining can help mitigate costs under imperfect information.https://buff.ly/WvOTnDU

Argmax is subtle. When is its cdf continuous? New paper gives conditions for multivariate argmax over Gaussian processes based on the Cameron-Martin theorem. Useful for inference in maximum score, empirical risk minimization & threshold regression examples. buff.ly/E6Y96gu

Communicating uncertainty about our conclusions is an important scientific task.
Is reporting a point estimate and standard error good enough?
We propose a practical recipe for checking whether it is, and for improving our report when it is not. buff.ly/1RmUW1F

Spatial models calibrated to observed flows suffer overfitting problems in granular settings. @tradediversion.bsky.social & Felix Tintelnot diagnose the problem, show data smoothing performs better, and introduce a finite model to quantify counterfactual uncertainty. buff.ly/rJ8EE0J

Can cities in developing countries create enough good jobs for climate migrants? @gulyssea.bsky.social and @clementimbert.bsky.social show that, over a decade, drought-induced immigration decreases informality and increases the number of formal firms and jobs in Brazil. buff.ly/d3h4E6p

One of the strengths of the Generalized Method of Moments is its ability to test model validity using overidentification tests. But what if the test fails? This paper provides a way to interpret misspecified models through the lens of optimal transport. buff.ly/uUSROOr

Econometrica Volume 94, Issue 1 (January 2026) is now online
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In settings with high informality, the gains from trade are significantly amplified by reductions in misallocation. During economic downturns, the informal sector acts as a buffer against unemployment but leads to larger aggregate real-income losses. buff.ly/uHxXRA4

Workplace disabilities don't have to end careers. New research analyzing Oregon workers compensation shows that subsidizing firms to accommodate injured workers boosts employment & earnings and creates welfare gains across the board. @corinamommaerts.bsky.social @rennstep.bsky.social buff.ly/YCtvuIN

This paper proposes optimal shrinkage of fixed effects in linear panel models, yielding precision gains under weak assumptions—unlike standard methods. It accommodates time-varying or disaggregated effects without strong distributional assumptions. buff.ly/NLvVteZ

Empirical Bayes can work much better when we let standard errors inform the estimated prior. Textbook methods ignore this and can badly miss. This paper develops flexible tools that stay CLOSE to the oracle and deliver large gains in practice. buff.ly/QYMI0V7

We show that the existence of an equilibrium in the classic private value first price auction model hinges on a single statistic of the joint distribution of the players’ values, namely the lowest value in the support of the high-value distribution. buff.ly/qik5070

Restricting beliefs may change the predictions of strong rationalizability non-monotonically. Yet, this paper shows, restricting initial beliefs on types can only sharpen the predictions. This allows to solve an open problem in robust-implementation theory.https://buff.ly/mO017Pu

A model of repeated games under non-probabilistic uncertainty: today's action must be chosen without knowing what tomorrow's stage game will be. So infinite-horizon payoffs are indeterminate. Can we still identify what equilibrium outcomes are possible? buff.ly/dq0KV6e

We are deeply saddened by the passing of Kate Ho, the John L. Weinberg Professor at Princeton and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. Kate was a brilliant IO economist and scholar whose impact on the profession will resonate for many years to come www.econometricsociety.org/publications...

Using random assignment to agronomic trials and six seasons to study dynamic learning, this paper shows how multidimensionality of farming decisions - and differential learning from own experience by skill - led to costly re-optimization and slow adoption. buff.ly/A6V4KwY

A new criterion to evaluate simple but suboptimal multi-good selling mechanisms: The rate at which a seller with precise info about buyers’ valuations approximates first-best revenue. Pure bundling achieves the optimal rate and outperforms separate sales. buff.ly/oQUJwvE

Econometrica Volume 93, Issue 6 (November 2025) is now online
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Who should choose treatments: planners or individuals? This paper develops a framework for learning optimal selection-driven targeting rules, applies it to an energy cost rebate program, and finds welfare gains double those of a selection-absent rule buff.ly/5PoGDrn

We show how optimal partisan gerrymandering varies with electoral uncertainty. For realistic parameters, gerrymandering resembles packing-and-cracking for a gerrymanderer with minority support, and uniform districting for one with majority support. buff.ly/JZteJzL

Macro outcomes depend on the distribution of markups across firms/time, making firm-level markup estimates key for macro analysis. Firm data with wide coverage primarily comes from financial statements. Can markups be accurately estimated with such data? buff.ly/tgD0OID

A widely held view is that the Gini coefficient is not decomposable by subgroups. This paper proposes an axiomatic framework that ensures well-behaved within and between-group terms under which the Gini is decomposable with a novel and unique formula. buff.ly/XdnzG6F

Instead of testing for bias from potential misspecification of model restrictions, it's nearly optimal to adapt, averaging restricted and unrestricted estimates using data-driven weights. shinyApp: buff.ly/MmMdwf4 Paper: buff.ly/HsuV7ep