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		Featured Research: Amy Finkelstein studies health care spending Health economists are trying to find ways to reduce the United States's $3.3 trillion annual health spending, which is nearly double that of peer countries. A working paper co-authored by John & Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics, Amy Finkelstein, proposes that the health care system pay long-term care hospitals the same prices that are paid to skilled nursing facilities, thereby saving around 1% of the country's spending - $5 billion per year. Professor Finkelstein states that she was inspired by colleague and Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, Esther Duflo's, speech, "The Economist as Plumber," to find and solve small sources of inefficiency, which could add up.

		Featured: Doctoral student Ryan Hill discusses the experience of an early-career scientist MIT News features an article about Ryan Hill, a doctoral student in the Department of Economics, advised by Associate Professor Heidi Williams. Hill talks about the experience of raising a family while earning a Ph.D.; he is often seen advocating for the student family community at MIT. Hill was also given the opportunity to speak with members of Congress about the negative impacts of a proposed tax bill that would make tuition waivers taxable in 2017. When not spending time with his family, one can find Hill studying the risk of failed research projects and the "scooped" phenomenon.

		MIT economist, Jerry A. Hausman, elected to the British Academy The British Academy, UK's national academy for the humanities and social sciences, honors Jerry Allen Hausman for his distinguished work in the field of economics. Professor Hausman is one of one of 76 scholars to be elected to the British Academy in 2018.

		Featured Research: Abhijit Banerjee studies Raskin, a social support program in Indonesia Raskin, or Rice for the Poor, is a social support program set up in the 1990s by the Indonesian goverment to provide rice to the country's most vulnerable families. Despite spending $1.5 billion a year, less than half of the rice was reaching the intended recipients. This is because many local officials were distributing rice to residents not on the poverty rolls or arbitrarily changing the subsidy price themselves. Banerjee and colleagues, including Ben Olken, another faculty member at MIT, began testing possible ways to fix the program in 2012. They sent postcards to the intended beneficiaries of Raskin in more than 500 villages that stated exactly what they were entitled to, which eliminated the village leaders' monopoly on information and resulting corruption.

		Featured Research: Amy Finkelstein studies Medicare spending on end-of-life care A new paper co-authored by Prof. Finkelstein, "Predictive modeling of U.S. healthcare spending in late life," challenges the widely held belief that a large portion of Medicare spending goes towards end-of-life care. The study found that although Medicare spending is concentrated among people who die, there is very little Medicare spending on patients whose death within the year is highly likely. Prof. Finkelstein says, "I do hope we stop pointing to end-of-life spending as an obvious problem. That's not to say there aren't problems in the U.S. health care system, but this is not a symptom of them."

		MIT establishes Jerry A. Hausman Graduate Fellowship in Economics Former students and friends of longtime Economics Department faculty member Jerry Hausman have joined to honor his immense contributions to the Department and to the profession with the creation of the Jerry A. Hausman Graduate Fellowship. Hausman, the John and Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics Post-tenure, has served for over four decades on the MIT faculty, training generations of students in econometrics, public finance, and applied microeconomics. His research accolades include the AEA's John Bates Clark Medal, the Frisch Medal, and the AEA Distinguished Fellow award, to highlight but a few. The first Jerry A. Hausman Graduate Fellow will be named in September 2018.

		Prof. Emeritus Robert Solow speaks on the future of work at MIT Work of the Future forum Professor of Economics, Emeritus Robert Solow participated in a panel discussion as an adviser to MIT's Work of the Future initiative on June 5, 2018.

		Alberto Abadie develops new econometric tools to study policy questions Professor of Economics Alberto Abadie uses his synthetic control method to study the effects of policy changes when a control group is otherwise not available. This methodology is typical of his approach to his work as an econometrician, creating new statistical models and methods with an eye on policy questions.

		Daron Acemoglu speaks on alleviating the impact of automation on displaced workers Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics Daron Acemoglu spoke on the impact of automation on human laborers at MIT Technology Review's EmTech Next conference on June 5, 2018. He demonstrated that automation has not improved wages or productivity in recent years because of the kinds of technology being developed, but are displacing workers. In order to offset the disruption that the technologies bring, he recommends that changes such as overhauling the education system be implemented to better prepare the workers of tomorrow.

		Featured Research: John Van Reenen studies the creation and use of technology Creating new technologies is one thing; using them well is another. This, over the last decade, has turned out to be a new vein of Van Reenen research. Along with several colleagues, including his former student, Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom, Van Reenen has closely scrutinized how firms use innovations, while driving toward a still-larger question: Does management matter?

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