Economics PhDs with harder-to-say names were less likely to land academic jobs and were placed at institutions about 70-80 spots lower in research rankings; in two audit studies, name difficulty explained roughly 10 to 50 percent of the ethnic name penalty.

Tracking Big Mac prices at thousands of US McDonald’s, economists found the urban premium jumped from 1% in 2014 to 9.5% in 2023, then fell back to 1.3% in 2024. Under high inflation, wages and land costs drove the gap.

In two studies, younger and middle-aged adults rated older people who felt younger than their age as less warm, competent and likeable, and were less willing to interact with them, because they were seen as breaking age stereotypes.

In a field experiment with 70,000 job applicants, interviews run by AI voice agents raised job offers by 12%, job starts by 18% and 30-day retention by 17%, and 78% of applicants given the choice picked the AI.

In a field experiment with 1,810 Facebook users, removing 82% of ads lifted active time by just 6%, while swapping targeted ads for untargeted ones cut ad clicks and, in the long run, reduced time on the platform by 13%.

Using Uber’s own trip counts for every US census tract, economists found ridesharing reduced traffic fatalities by 5.2% in areas where it operates, mostly at night and on weekends, saving lives worth $6.8 billion a year.

Sorting 160 people as rich or poor from photos, observers scored 0.63 accuracy with bodies, 0.61 with whole persons and 0.54 with faces, where 0.50 is chance; plain body silhouettes (0.59) beat clothing details (0.52).

Weekend reviews carry a 3% lower share of 5-star ratings and a 6% higher share of 1- to 3-star ratings than weekday reviews, and the gap comes mainly from who chooses to write on weekends, not from worse products or moods.