The Review of Economic Studies is one of the core journals in economics. It is essential reading for economists, consistently ranking among the top five journals.

The European Union designates 26% of its landmass as protected areas, limiting economic development for biodiversity. We use the staggered introduction of protected areas between 1985 and 2019 to study the selection of protected land and the causal effect of protection on vegetation cover and nightlights. We find no meaningful impacts on either outcome across four decades, countries, protection cohorts, or land characteristics.

We study the impact of large, successful manufacturing plants on other local producers in China, focusing on “Million-Rouble Plants” built in the 1950s during a brief alliance with the U.S.S.R. The ephemeral geopolitical situation and the locations of allied and enemy airbases provide exogenous variation in plant siting.

Racial covenants in housing deeds were widely used in the United States during the early 20th century to segregate neighborhoods. In 1948, the Supreme Court decision in Shelley v. Kraemer made racial covenants unenforceable in court, stopping short of prohibiting them entirely. We surmise that even after losing their judicial enforceability, such covenants could have shaped segregation if they served as a focal point for coordination on an initial equilibrium in neighborhood formation, a context characterized by investment durability and path dependency.

In a data economy, transactions of goods and services generate data, which is stored, traded and depreciates. How are the economics of this economy different from traditional production economies? How do these differences matter for measurement of GDP, firm values, depreciation rates, welfare and externalities?

We study structural change in production networks for intermediate inputs (input-output network) and new capital (investment network). For each network, we document that the share of output produced by services (relative to goods) is rising over time. While the relative prices of services that produce intermediates and consumption are rising, we find that the relative price of services that produce investment is falling over time.

We conduct an experimental analysis of selective disclosure in communication. In the model, an informed sender aims to influence a receiver by disclosing verifiable evidence that is selected from a larger pool of available evidence. Our experimental design leverages this model’s rich comparative statics, allowing us to systematically quantify the effects of selection relative to concealment.