Do constituents limit interest groups' influence over elected officials? Using new data on congressional speeches, campaign donations, and over 10 million lobbying contacts from FARA filings, we track politicians’ responses to international events that raise the political cost of appearing too close to foreign governments. We find three main results. First, politicians strongly connected to shocked countries lose local campaign contributions after a shock. Second, they are less willing than weakly connected politicians to praise the affected country in their speeches. Third, while weakly connected politicians increase in-person meetings with the lobbyists of shocked countries, strongly connected ones shift to remote contacts. We show that a simple relational contracting model can explain these findings. Overall, our study suggests that politicians' concern with their constituents' reaction can deter foreign influence—but only partially. Politicians and interest groups adjust to reputational shocks, forming new ties and reshaping old ones to navigate public scrutiny.

 This paper examines how sponsored search auctions shape product market competition. I develop a model in which firms bid for prominence on a platform and set prices, under a cost-per-click commission model. Consumers observe prices before search but incur costs to learn match values. The analysis reveals a novel mechanism: ad commissions pass through asymmetrically to prices. For the prominent firm, commissions function like a fixed cost, leaving its price largely unaffected; for the non-prominent firm, they act as a marginal cost, raising its price. This asymmetry reduces competition and can even reverse price rankings. I explore alternative commission models and provide suggestive empirical evidence consistent with the theory.

 Using Indian microdata on employer-employee caste composition and household consumption, we document demand segmentation along caste lines, limiting firms' market penetration and reducing firm size in the economy. We develop a model where consumers prefer goods produced by socially closer groups, and firms overcome these barriers by hiring employees from the target consumer group. We identify the structural parameters governing demand segmentation using rainfall-induced demand shocks. Counterfactuals indicate that social identity-driven barriers restrict the growth of high-quality firms while sustaining low-quality ones. Lowering the cost of hiring out-group employees expands firm size by improving market access and enhances consumer welfare through greater variety of products.

 When a poor household in India needs hospital care, the bill is often paid with borrowed money, much of it borrowed from relatives and friends. We study how India’s national hospital insurance programme, PM-JAY, changed the balance sheets of the poorest households, comparing neighbours across state borders before and after the launch. In the bottom income decile, medical debt fell by 28 per cent of its pre-launch level, mostly debt owed to relatives and friends, and a new illness no longer led to debt. Households also saved less in gold and more in formal deposits, and their borrowing moved from moneylenders and self-help groups to formal lenders and planned purchases. However, moneylender borrowing rose among the richest tenth. We show that a model in which bills become debt when they exceed cash at hand, insurance lowers the value of a liquid buffer, and formal lenders screen on distress risk can account for these changes. Each rupee of claims is worth about two rupees to covered households, and targeting the poorest households yields greater welfare than either universal coverage at the same fiscal cost or coverage targeted to households with the highest predicted hospitalisation risk.

 Tanto en EE. UU. como en España, la publicidad online ya supuso en 2021 más del 50 por 100 del gasto total en publicidad. Unido a múltiples retos ya conocidos por los economistas (barreras de entrada por economías de escala, switching costs, efectos de red), la publicidad online añade además la personalización de la publicidad y las dificultades para preservar la privacidad. Veremos que la publicidad online potencialmente puede tanto favorecer como dificultar la competencia. Repasaremos literatura académica que ofrece claves para identificar y cuantificar formas en que la publicidad online puede generar barreras a la competencia y daños a los consumidores.

 - Watch: Shoplifters, (2018) - Japan
   - Read: The Paper Menagerie, by Ken Liu

 - night comes first (ongoing): முதலில் இரவு வரும் - ஆதவன், 1985 (Tamil)