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		The Natural Experimenter MIT economist Josh Angrist's meticulous methods have influenced scholars for two decades. Now he's zeroing in on what makes some schools better than others.

		Featured Research: The health-insurance markets of the (very near) future An online health-insurance exchange is coming to your state. How effective will it be? That is an increasingly important question in the United States. In June 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the country's Affordable Care Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. The program mandates private-sector health insurance for all citizens, and provides subsidies for those who otherwise could not afford it. Insurance-plan choices will be available through exchanges, or marketplaces; most people will be able to study plans and sign up for one online. As of December, nearly 20 states have elected to run exchanges themselves; the federal government will run the exchanges in other states.

		Bengt Holmstrom Named AFA Fellow Bengt Holmstrom has been named a Fellow of the American Finance Association. The designation of Fellow recognizes distinguished and sustained contributions to the field of Finance. Professor Holmstrom's research has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of incentives, the theory of the firm, corporate governance, liquidity, and financial crises.

		Featured Research: Building the case for the creation of a fiscal union within a currency A new paper co-authored by Ivan Werning studies cross-country insurance for members of a currency union using an open economy model with nominal price and wage rigidities. The study provides two results that build the case for the creation of a fiscal union within a currency union. The first result shows that, if financial markets are incomplete, the value of gaining access to any given level of insurance is greater for countries that are members of a currency union. The second shows that, even if financial markets are complete, private insurance is inefficiently low. A role emerges for government intervention in macro insurance to both guarantee its existence and to influence its operation. The efficient insurance arrangement can be implemented by contingent transfers within a fiscal union. The benefits of such a fiscal union are larger, the bigger the asymmetric shocks affecting the members of the currency union, the more persistent these shocks, and the less open the member economies.

		Featured Research: At most a third of us show a consistent approach to financial risk In economics, classical theory holds that we have consistent risk preferences, regardless of the precise decision, from investments to insurance programs and retirement plans. But studies in behavioral economics indicate that people's choices can vary greatly depending on the subject matter and circumstances of each decision. A new paper co-authored by Professor Amy Finkelstein brings a large dose of empirical data to the problem, by looking at the way tens of thousands of Americans have handled risk in selecting health insurance and retirement plans. The study finds that at most 30 percent of us make consistent decisions about financial risk across a variety of areas.

		Daron Acemoglu and Esther Duflo named in Foreign Policy's 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2012 Professors Daron Acemoglu and Esther Duflo were recognized by the Journal of Foreign Policy as two of the 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2012.

		Amy Finkelstein elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society Professor Amy Finkelstein is among the 22 new Fellows of the Econometric Society. Fellow inductees include MIT PhD ('91) Eduardo M. Engel.

		Anna Mikusheva named recipient of the 2012 Elaine Bennett Research Prize Anna Mikusheva, the Castle-Krob Associate Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the recipient of the 2012 Elaine Bennett Research Prize. The Elaine Bennett Research Prize was established in 1998 to recognize and honor outstanding research in any field of economics by a woman at the beginning of her career. Initially, her prize will be recognized at annual business luncheon of the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) at the 2013 American Economic Association meetings in San Diego; Professor Mikusheva will formally accept the Prize at the 2014 meetings in Philadelphia.

		Featured Research: The economic cost of increased temperatures Even temporary rises in local temperatures significantly damage long-term economic growth in the world�s developing nations, according to a new study co-authored by Professor Ben Olken, Melissa Dell (Ph.D. '12) and Ben Jones. "Higher temperatures lead to substantially lower economic growth in poor countries," says Olken. And while it's relatively straightforward to see how droughts and hot weather might hurt agriculture, the study indicates that hot spells have much wider economic effects. "What we're suggesting is that it's much broader than [agriculture]," Olken adds. "It affects investment, political stability and industrial output."

		Featured Research: Evidence found for famous hypothesis of comparative advantage A recent paper by MIT economists Arnaud Costinot and Dave Donaldson uses a novel approach to suggest that David Ricardo's concept of "comparative advantage" is buttressed by real-world evidence. Ricardo's hypothesis is one of the most famous and venerable ideas in economics. Dating to 1817, Ricardo's proposal is that countries will specialize in making the goods they can produce most efficiently - their areas of comparative advantage - and trade for goods they make less well, rather than making all kinds of products for themselves.

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