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BPEA


Mark your calendar!


Fall 2025 conference: September 25-26, 2025.


Spring 2026 conference: March 26-27, 2026.


Fall 2026 conference: September 24-25, 2026.

 
 

About

The Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) is a semi-annual academic conference and journal that pairs rigorous research with real-time policy analysis to address the most urgent economic challenges of the day. Working drafts of the papers are presented and discussed at conferences typically held twice each year, and the final versions of the papers and comments along with summaries of the general discussions are published in the journal by the Johns Hopkins University Press several months later. The views expressed by the authors, discussants and conference participants in BPEA are strictly those of the authors, discussants and conference participants, and not of the Brookings Institution. As an independent think tank, the Brookings Institution does not take institutional positions on any issue. Please contact Haowen Chen ([email protected]) if you have any questions.

New and Noteworthy

Treasury bills and securities.

Treasury market dysfunction and the role of the central bank

Anil K Kashyap, Jeremy C. Stein, Jonathan L. Wallen, and Joshua Younger
Shipping containers behind a fence.

The US trade deficit: Myths and realities

Maurice Obstfeld

Symposium on Federal Reserve's Monetary Policy Framework Review

William B. English, Brian Sack, Charles L. Evans, Christina D. Romer, and David H. Romer

Why do we dislike inflation?

Stefanie Stantcheva

Accounting for the widening mortality gap between American adults with and without a BA

Anne Case and Angus Deaton

The power of substitution: The Great German Gas debate in retrospect

Benjamin Moll, Moritz Schularick, and Georg Zachmann

Where are the missing workers?

Katharine Abraham and Lea Rendell

Economic implications of the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act

John Bistline, Neil R. Mehrotra, and Catherine Wolfram

Understanding US inflation during the COVID era

Laurence Ball, Daniel Leigh, and Prachi Mishra

Working from home around the world

Cevat Giray Aksoy, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Mathias Dolls, and Pablo Zarate

Losing the inflation anchor

Ricardo Reis

The economic gains from equity

Shelby R. Buckman, Laura Y. Choi, Mary C. Daly, and Lily M. Seitelman

Understanding the economic impact of COVID-19 on women

Claudia Goldin

Monetary policy and racial inequality

Alina Kristin Bartscher, Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick, and Paul Wachtel

The sustainability of state and local government pensions: A public finance approach

Jamie Lenney, Byron Lutz, Finn Schüle, and Louise Sheiner

The economic costs of pretrial detention

Will Dobbie and Crystal S. Yang

Has the Paycheck Protection Program succeeded?

Glenn Hubbard and Michael R. Strain

Fiscal effects of COVID-19

Alan J. Auerbach, William G. Gale, Byron Lutz, and Louise Sheiner

Policies for a second wave

David Baqaee, Emmanuel Farhi, Michael J. Mina, and James Stock

Corporate debt overhang and credit policy

Markus Brunnermeier and Arvind Krishnamurthy

What's up with the Phillips Curve?

Marco Del Negro, Michele Lenza, Giorgio E. Primiceri, and Andrea Tambalotti

Declining worker power and American economic performance

Anna Stansbury and Lawrence H. Summers

Progressive wealth taxation

Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman

The real effects of the financial crisis

Ben S. Bernanke

Saving the heartland: Place-based policies in 21st Century America

Benjamin Austin, Edward Glaeser, and Lawrence Summers

Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century

Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton

BPEA Editors

Janice C. Eberly
Nonresident Senior Fellow - Economic Studies

Jón Steinsson
Nonresident Senior Fellow - Economic Studies