Researchers at the University of British Columbia found that B.C.’s decision to provide universal, no-cost prescription contraception sharply reduced what patients pay, with the largest financial gains for people in their 20s. Before the policy, the pill averaged about $25 per month, while IUDs ranged from $75 to more than $500 up front—and for long-term pill users, lifetime costs could reach $10,000. Two years after the policy change, patient spending was 83 per cent lower than expected, translating to average savings of $43 per contraceptive user per year.

From a young age most people are told to be rational: weigh costs and benefits, pick the option that pays off best. But a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Marta C. Couto, Fernando P. Santos (Socially Intelligent Artificial Systems group at the University of Amsterdam), and Christian Hilbe at the Interdisciplinary Transformation University in Linz suggests that in social situations, people who are a bit less precise – a bit more ‘noisy’ – can sometimes come out ahead.

Commercial marketing oriented toward sustainability is not compatible with degrowth, even when it promotes consuming less. That is the conclusion of a study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Spain, and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

A good manager can be just as important to a company’s performance as the combined productive capacity of its employees. This is shown in a new international study, published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics. The study also shows that those who are most eager to become managers are not necessarily the best suited to the role.

Officials in Oakland sharply increased the number of homeless encampments they cleared in the months after the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision made it easier for municipalities nationwide to do so, new research from UC Berkeley shows. Many sites have been closed repeatedly, the analysis found — one was swept 18 times in a four-year period. More recently, efforts to close camps have shifted into census tracts that have higher poverty rates and larger shares of Hispanic residents. 

Samuel Kruger, associate professor of finance; John Griffin, James A. Elkins Centennial Chair in Finance; and doctoral student Prateek Mahajan found that fraud in government-funded pandemic loans explained 22.5% of the average increase in housing prices during 2020 and 2021.