A paper is not the final destination. Living Science revisits influential research as new opportunities arise, making it possible to ask what still holds, what has changed, and why.
Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings?
Angrist and Krueger · Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1991 · data through 2024
A year of school pays half again more than it did in 1979. The famous quarter-of-birth experiment can no longer be run: the laws stopped binding.
Reassessing the Ins and Outs of Unemployment
Shimer · Review of Economic Dynamics, 2012 · data through 2026
Hiring still drives unemployment, as the paper argued. The one exception is the 2020 layoff wave, which the paper's own framework predicted would look different.
Regional Evolutions
Blanchard and Katz · Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1992 · data through 2025
State employment shocks are still permanent. But Americans move away from weak local economies about half as readily as they did in the 1980s, so local slumps last longer.
The China Syndrome
Autor, Dorn and Hanson · American Economic Review, 2013 · data through 2024
The import-competition effect on manufacturing jobs holds through 2012, fades to zero, then flips sign as the shock recedes. The lost jobs did not come back.
The Effect of Minimum Wages on Low-Wage Jobs
Cengiz, Dube, Lindner and Zipperer · Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2019 · data through 2024
Still no detectable job loss through the fifteen-dollar era, but the central estimate drifts toward zero as states push into territory the original sample never saw.