Social ties spread demand for new products; retailers learn from early buyers and expand offerings, amplifying access to global varieties through local demand spillovers, from David Argente, Esteban Méndez, and Diana Van Patten www.nber.org/papers/w35104

Cash acts as a fallback when outages and natural disasters disrupt digital payments. Using data, surveys, and a randomized controlled trial to show cash improves resilience, from Fernando E. Alvarez, David Argente, and Diana Van Patten www.nber.org/papers/w35115

Motivated by evidence on payment linkages in supply chains, we introduce an endogenous payment-chain network in a business-cycle model where delays slow production and reduce TFP, from Saki Bigio, Esteban Méndez, and Diana Van Patten nber.org/papers/w34631

Listen to VSE Professor @nathannunn.bsky.social in two recent podcasts, one with @causalinf.bsky.social discussing his career beginnings and how he came to study Economic History and Development... causalinf.substack.com/p/s4e17-nath... (1/2)

What does it take to live a meaningful life? Combining human input with LLMs, a unique corpus of life histories of older Americans collected during the 1930s is studied to find answers, from @LagakosDavid, Stelios Michalopoulos, and @JoachimVoth https://www.nber.org/papers/w33373

🚨 A paper for those interested in the intersection of trade and political economy So happy 🥳

Another banger of a paper by @dianavanpatten.bsky.social and Esteban Méndez

``Economic fundamentals are important determinants of attitudes toward openness. We merge voting and economic data to study a national referendum on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Firm-level and within-industry exposure to the FTA significantly shape employees' voting behavior." (link below 👇)