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		Esther Duflo selected as one of five recipients of the 2013 Dan David Prize Professor Esther Duflo and physician Alfred Sommer will share the 2013 Dan David prize for the "future" dimension, for breakthroughs that hold great promise for the world's improvement. The Dan David Prize recognizes and encourages innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms. It aims to foster universal values of excellence, creativity, justice, democracy and progress and to promote the scientific, technological and humanistic achievements that advance and improve our world. The prizes are granted to individuals or institutions with proven, exceptional, distinct excellence in the sciences, arts, and humanities that have made an outstanding contribution to humanity on the basis of merit, without discrimination of gender, race, ethnicity, color, religion, language, nationality, disability, or political affiliation. (Photo © Patrick Imbert)

		Anna Mikusheva selected as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow Dr. Anna Mikusheva has received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. The Sloan Research Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. These fellowships are awarded yearly to researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field.

		David Donaldson selected as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow Dr. David Donaldson has received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. The Sloan Research Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. These fellowships are awarded yearly to researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field.

		Featured Research: Happiness on Tap: Piped Water Adoption in Urban Morocco A new field experiment, co-authored by MIT economist Esther Duflo, shows just how much access to clean water matters to people. Residents of Morocco, the experiment demonstrates, are willing to take out loans and pay twice as much for water per month in order to have it piped into their homes. And despite the dent in their bottom-line finances, people in households that gain running water report significant improvements in well-being and happiness.

		President Obama announces intent to appoint Esther Duflo to Global Development Council President Barack Obama has announced he intends to appoint MIT Professor Esther Duflo to the President's Global Development Council. Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, and a founder and director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).

		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.

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