I have a tradition of selecting my favorite papers from the massive ASSA Annual Meeting. In no particular order, here they are:

How Do the Rich Think About Redistribution? by Alain Cohn, Lasse Jessen, Marko Klasjna and Paul Smeets presented at the session titled Inequality and Distributional Preferences.

• With all the talk around wealth taxation, I am interested to hear what rich individuals think about redistribution as they have the most to lose.

Statistical Non-Significance in Empirical Economics by Alberto Abadie presented at the session titled Treatment Effects and Causal Inference.

• Null results can be very useful to shift prior beliefs so don’t hide those null results.

Thousands of Alpha Tests by Stefano Giglio, Yuan Liao and Dacheng Xiu presented at the session titled Mutual Funds: New Perspectives.

• The battle of active vs passive investment strategies meets multiple-hypothesis testing. Some hedge fund managers can generate alpha.

Evidence on Expectations of Household Finances by Joao F. Cocco, Francisco Gomes and Paula Lopes presented at the session titled Learning in Asset Markets.

• Super cool data!

Does the Minimum Wage Affect Child Maltreatment and Parenting Behaviors? A City-level Analysis by Lindsey Bullinger, Kerri Raissian and Will Schneider presented at the session titled Broadening the Minimum Wage Debate Beyond Employment.

• Interesting research program. The other paper in the session “Can Labor Market Policies Reduce Deaths of Despair?” is also very interesting.

Does Financial Strain Lower Worker Productivity? by Supreet Kaur, Sendhil Mullainathan, Suanna Oh and Frank Schilbach presented at the session titled Psychology of Poverty: Preferences, Decision-Making and Productivity.

• Empirical research on Mullainathan and Shafir’s Scarcity model. I know I feel much better getting paid every two weeks rather than monthly.

Tipping and the Dynamics of Social Norms by Neil Thakral and Linh Tô presented at the session titled Field Applications and Explorations of Reference-Dependence.

• I find it fascinating how tipping norms differ from country to country. Perhaps this paper will give some insights on how tipping norms change.