HCEO

09/04/2026

New work from HCEO member Abdoulaye Ndiaye and colleagues shows that low property taxes amplify lock-in among elderly homeowners; raising them reallocates housing toward young families.

Author(s) Joshua Coven Sebastian Golder Arpit Gupta Abdoulaye Ndiaye Low property taxes amplify lock-in among elderly homeowners, limiting housing access for young families. Raising them reallocates housing toward the young through two channels: capitalization into lower prices reduces required down...

09/04/2026

Congratulations to HCEO member d Sally Grantham-McGregor, professor emeritus at University College London, who, with Susan Walker and Susan Chang-Lopez, shared the 2026 Yidan Prize for Education Development. They were recognized for landmark research showing that early learning and strong caregiver-child interaction, bolstered by a simple caregiver support program, can improve outcomes for disadvantaged children—with improvements in education, employment, and health that last for decades. Their Reach Up model has now improved the lives of children across 21 low- and middle-income countries. https://www.yidanprize.org/laureates/susan-walker-sally-grantham-mcgregor-susan-chang-lopez

08/24/2026

A new NBER working paper from HCEO member Costas Meghir and coauthor Serena Goldberg finds that childcare can increase mothers’ employment, but the impact on child development depends on the quality and context of care.

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

08/20/2026

Gains in outcomes from a randomized, high-quality early childhood education program decline over time for twins compared to singleton children, HCEO member Jorge Luis Garcia and colleagues find in a new paper. Differences in parental investment explain the outcome differences, the authors write.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/737241

08/17/2026

By age 17, a quarter of U.S. students have experienced a peer su***de. New research from HCEO member Janet Currie and coauthors finds a significant impact on those students’ mental health, risk of self-harm, and criminal behavior.

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

08/04/2026

On July 1, the new Illinois Department of Early Childhood opened, consolidating early childhood care resources under one roof. Our executive director Alison Baulos Gunasinghe tells WBEZ’s In the Loop podcast that this improves equity and access to quality care for families. State-level coordination of care also helps build capacity by investing in the early care workforce and addressing scarcity.

How will the new Illinois Department of Early Childhood simplify accessing early childhood services in the state.

07/29/2026

On the UChicago Big Brains podcast, HCEO member Dana Suskind explains why responsive, relational human interactions are so important to a child’s development in the earliest years of life. Even in the age of AI, parents and caregivers cannot be replaced or outsourced in building a child’s brain.

07/27/2026

How do IQ and personality traits relate to risk preferences? Our director, The Heckman Equation, and coauthors explore this in a new NBER working paper. They find some gender differences that vary with the size of the risk.

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

07/22/2026

Personality traits may help explain how people make decisions in risky situations, James J. Heckman (The Heckman Equation) explained in a talk at the 25th Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), held at IMPA - Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada in Brazil on Friday. He previewed research exploring how traits such as openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness relate to economic preferences, such as risk aversion.

The study presented here examines how personality traits can influence decisions involving risk

07/20/2026

Our director James J. Heckman (The Heckman Equation) is in Rio to discuss advances in economic theory.

The International Conference on Public Economic Theory (PET 2026) is part of a series of scientific meetings dedicated to the frontiers of research in economics, featuring participation from internationally distinguished researchers