In a field experiment in India, Angelika Budjan and coauthors gave people the choice to learn how much air pollution shortens life expectancy in their district, and found that many deliberately avoid, or later “forget”, the distressing answer. But when people believe their actions can make a difference, this strategic ignorance fades: a key lesson for information campaigns, which should pair bad news with things people can do about it. “Strategic Ignorance and the Perceived Efficacy of Taking Action” (with Anca Balietti, Tillmann Eymess and Alice Soldà) is published in The Economic Journal; a summary is available on VoxDev.
Richard Bluhm, Christian Lessmann and Paul Schaudt show how political power shapes where and how cities grow in the developing world. Using hundreds of administrative reforms between 1987 and 2018 as a global quasi-experiment, they find that cities which gain regional capital status raise economic activity by roughly 14 to 22 percent within five years. Nearby cities gain too, so this is not simply redistribution. The effect runs through migration and investment: new capitals attract more educated migrants, and public spending and foreign direct investment concentrate there. “The Political Geography of Cities” is the lead article in the July 2026 issue of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics; a summary is available on VoxDev.
Did the campaign against “blood diamonds” actually work? Exploiting fine-grained variation in where alluvial diamonds can be mined, Dietmar Fehr and coauthors show that the Kimberley Process certification scheme led to a lasting reduction in armed conflict across Africa, evidence that cutting rebel groups off from resource revenues can promote peace. “Can International Initiatives Promote Peace? Diamond Certification and Armed Conflicts in Africa” (with Christine Binzel and Andreas Link) is under revision at the American Economic Review; a summary is available on VoxEU.
And in a survey experiment with more than 9,000 Americans, Jeffrey Yusof and Ricardo Perez-Truglia test how the public image of billionaires shapes support for taxing them. Experts predicted that any unflattering information would raise the demand for taxation. In fact most treatments had no effect, and some backfired. Only one message reliably moved the needle: billionaires’ lavish lifestyles. “Billionaire Superstar: Public Image and Demand for Taxation” is accepted at the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (NBER working paper).
A great term for the lab, with more to come.