Wrap-up of Job Market Series 2025

This year was the 15^th year of our tradition of posting blogs written by PhD students on the job market summarizing their job market papers. We received a record 74 submissions this year from students at 48 universities in 14 countries. The submitted posts were based on work in 30 different countries plus several multi-country studies, with India (20 posts) by far the most common setting, followed by Nigeria and Pakistan (5 each). There were more posts submitted based on RCTs this year that last year (42% vs 30%), and about the same percentage using DiD and event studies (27%), with the remainder a mix of IV, descriptive, structural models, and some that were unclear.

We ended up selecting 30 to publish, the most ever, and we could have taken more except for running out of calendar days before the end of the year. We again collaborated with the Cornell Economics that Really Matters blog, which has published some more posts in their series – so far they have 10 posts up in their series-  please check them out.

In case you missed any of ours, and to make it easy to find these all in one place in the future, here is the full list of posts we published this year:

1.      When Risk Aversion Keeps Firms Small: Evidence from Kenyan Retailers

2.      The Price of Flexibility: Revealing Salaries in Job Postings

3.      When every child is stunted, no child Is? How local norms distort perceptions of growth

4.      Priced for Development? How Price Controls Spread Technology but Stall Innovation

5.       Escaping the Poverty Trap: Why Some Households Stay Poor — and Others Don’t

6.      Lower Prices, Lower Chances? How Misbeliefs Keep Freelancers Out of Online Jobs

7.      Fostering Trust to Save Lives: Evidence from Organ Donation in Tunisia

8.       What if the train brought the job to you? How public transit moves opportunity closer—and changes who gets hired

9.      Should firms subsidize worker‑owned capital? Experimental evidence from India’s platform economy

10.  Why would employees work harder when firms don’t pay their wages?

11. Expecting the worst: Household bargaining and the suppression of women’s work in India

12. Scaling short days: Even limited childcare can transform family labor

13. Planning for Which Future? Searching for Jobs While Running a Business

14. Enforcement Matters: How Nigeria’s Sharia Reform Created Winners and Losers

15. A framework for social network interventions in contentious and conflictual settings

16.  Beyond sinking sand: How housing markets respond to an environmental hazard in Mexico City

17.  Can better seeds clear the air? How India can fight pollution through smarter farming

18.  Discretion and Capture: How Politics Shapes Pollution Enforcement in India

19.  Do uncoordinated flood loss mitigation investments produce spillovers?

20.  Following the tracks: How digital monitoring expands access to mechanization in agriculture

21.  Building Trust and Transparency via Text Message: How Digital Receipts Change Smallholder Markets

22.  When spousal jealousy keeps women out of work

23.  Consensus or polarization in environmental action? How local leader incentives shape the power of information

24.  When gender quotas protect the powerful: Lessons from China’s civil service

25.  With women in medicine, medical research starts asking different questions

26.  Navigating risky jobs: Why married couples choose the same employer in urban India

27.  Transparency without reach? Lessons from India’s largest transparency initiative

28. Technology of liberation or control? The political impacts of social media

29.  Is the learning crisis partly a motivation crisis?

30.  Should I wait or should I sell? The impact of market information and commercialization advice on farmers’ sales decisions