Clay weekly context brief for the Economics category (ISO week 2026-W43).

Clay tracks publications from the Economics feed list. Below are recent items from this category, each with its source and a short description of what the publication covers when one is available in the source feed.

Recent publications:
1. Accuracy of Uniform Inference on Fine Grid Points
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.18627
   Uniform confidence bands are widely used in empirical analysis for uncertainty qualification of nonparametric inference of unknown functions.
2. Designing Experiments for External Decision Makers
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.22032
   Standard Bayesian experimental design (BED) methods assume the experimenter alone will act on the data, choosing the best action given their own beliefs and goals.
3. Auction-based allocation of routes in capacity-constrained networks
   Source: econ.GN (General Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.20125
   We study the route-set allocation problem between end nodes in capacity-constrained flow networks with transfer costs.
4. Switchback Price Experiments with Forward-Looking Demand
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.14904
   Switchback experiments are widely used in pricing applications.
5. Partial Localization and Multifractality in Heterogeneous Population Growth with Resetting
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.22038
   We study a model of heterogeneous multiplicative growth with mean-field redistribution and independent local stochastic resetting.
6. Whom Do AI Agents Work For? Role Assignment Induces Sponsorship Bias in LLM Recommenders
   Source: econ.GN (General Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.17989
   Large language models (LLMs) now serve as conversational shopping assistants on platforms that also sell advertising.
7. A Structural Matrix Autoregression Framework for International Spillovers
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.00262
   Understanding how macroeconomic shocks propagate across countries requires structural models that can jointly identify country-specific shocks and their international transmission.
8. Equitable Auctions
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.07799
   We study how auction design shapes surplus division among bidders.
9. Shopping by algorithm: How agentic AI deploys human heuristics as a surrogate consumer
   Source: econ.GN (General Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.28372
   Consumers increasingly delegate purchasing decisions to Large Language Models (LLMs) acting as surrogate consumers.
10. Identification and Inference for Algorithmic Frontiers with Selective Labels
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.14977
   This paper provides identification results to characterize a fairness-accuracy (FA) frontier, and statistical inference tools to test hypotheses and build a confidence set for the FA-frontier, when outcomes are observed only for selected individuals.
11. Hidden Commitment Power Is Powerless
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.02769
   A principal who offers a contract may renege when her default option is sufficiently attractive.
12. Ideological Bias in LLMs' Economic Causal Reasoning
   Source: econ.GN (General Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.21334
   Do large language models (LLMs) exhibit systematic ideological bias when reasoning about economic causal effects?
13. Efficient GMM and Weighting Matrix under Misspecification
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.04961
   This paper develops efficient GMM estimation under misspecified moment conditions.
14. Contracting under Misspecification
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.25590
   This paper studies agency problems when both parties worry that the model linking action to output is misspecified.
15. Generative AI Availability, Grades, and Student Satisfaction at a Large University
   Source: econ.GN (General Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.21534
   The availability of generative AI (GenAI) has raised concerns that college students substitute GenAI for cognitive effort, earning high grades without learning.
16. Estimating treatment-effect heterogeneity across sites, in multi-site randomized experiments with few units per site
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.17254
   Multi-site randomized experiments, which are common in economics and medicine, can reveal how treatment effects vary across settings.
17. Metric geometry for ranking-based voting: Tools for learning electoral structure
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10293
   In this paper, we develop the metric geometry of ranking statistics, proving that the two major permutation distances in the statistics literature -- Kendall tau and Spearman footrule -- extend naturally to incomplete rankings with both coordinate embeddings and graph realizations.
18. Does Rank Still Matter? Position Bias When AI Agents Shop on Our Behalf
   Source: econ.GN (General Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.22697
   When shopping is delegated to AI agents, it is unclear whether the ranking advantage documented for humans persists.
19. Locally Robust Inference with Outcomes Predicted by Machine Learning
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.21756
   Many parameters of interest in economics depend on outcomes generated by machine learning (ML).These generated outcomes are subsequently used in standard econometric estimation and typically treated as observed, a practice that threatens the validity of downstream inference.
20. Rewarding Noise: Incentives in Decentralized A/B Testing
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19512
   Many firms that run A/B tests struggle with low statistical power, increasing the risk that launch decisions are driven by noise rather than true impact.
21. Which Text Matters: Handling Model Uncertainty in Text-as-Data Regressions, with an Application to Central Bank Communication
   Source: econ.GN (General Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19720
   Social scientists routinely convert text into covariates like topic shares, ideal points or sentiment scores, and insert them into statistical models of interest.
22. On the fairness of single round-robin tournaments: Evidence from European football
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.21296
   Single round-robin tournaments are widely regarded as unfair because of their home-away imbalance: some competitors play more home games than the others.
23. Building a Sovereign Benchmark The Limits of Private Coordination
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19516
   Public debt supplies liquidity and collateral services only if institutions coordinate on using the same claim.
24. Long Term Pediatric Vaccine Tender Scheduling with Quantity Discounts
   Source: econ.GN (General Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19045
   Pediatric vaccine procurement for low- and lower-middle-income countries (LICs and LMICs) requires long-term coordination across heterogeneous vaccine markets, competing stakeholder objectives, and uncertain demand, yet tenders are currently scheduled as a series of independent renewals.
25. Robustifying Empirical Bayes
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.00704
   Two strategies are explored for robustifying classical denoising procedures for the Gaussian sequence model.
26. Revealing Structured Heterogeneity
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.20441
   In this paper, we study models of restricted heterogeneity.
27. Safety Research and the Allocation of Frontier Compute
   Source: econ.GN (General Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.14305
   Who should give up compute for AI safety research: customers or capability research?
28. Beyond Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Accelerators: Directed Evidence for Adaptive Sustainability Portfolios
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20875
   Governments and development partners often seek Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) "accelerators" whose progress can propagate gains across human well-being, institutions, resources, and environmental priorities.
29. Persuading an inattentive and privately informed receiver
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.01250
   This paper studies the persuasion of a receiver who accesses information only if she exerts costly attention effort.
30. Pregnancy and Interrupted Schooling: Evidence from Monthly Histories
   Source: econ.GN (General Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.14317
   Pregnancy can disrupt schooling before infant care begins.
31. Bootstrap inference in factor-augmented regressions with weak factors
   Source: econ.EM (Econometrics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00947
   In this paper, we develop bootstrap methods for factor-augmented regressions with potentially weak common components, allowing signal eigenvalues to diverge at heterogeneous rates $N^{\alpha_k}$, where $0<\alpha_k\leq1$, $k=1,\ldots,r$.
32. Split the Yield, Share the Risk: Pricing, Hedging and Fixed rates in DeFi
   Source: econ.TH (Theoretical Economics)
   Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.22784
   We present the first formal treatment of \emph{yield tokenization}, a mechanism that decomposes yield-bearing assets into principal and yield components to facilitate risk transfer and price discovery in decentralized finance (DeFi).

Sources in this brief: econ.EM (Econometrics); econ.GN (General Economics); econ.TH (Theoretical Economics).
Selected 32 of 434 available items for this weekly brief.