Professor Coombs and coauthors’ paper, “Early Withdrawal of Pandemic Unemployment Insurance: Effects on Employment and Earnings,” was cited in the 2025 Economic Report of the President, a prestigious acknowledgment of the research’s relevance and impact on policy discussions.

Originally published in the AEA Papers and Proceedings in 2022, the study provides critical insights into the economic implications of the sudden withdrawal of expanded pandemic unemployment benefits in June 2021. Utilizing anonymized bank transaction data for 16,253 individuals who were receiving unemployment insurance (UI) in April 2021, the research employs a difference-in-differences approach to compare states that withdrew expanded UI benefits to those that retained them. Interested readers can find the article here.

We congratulate Professor Coombs and the research team for this outstanding achievement and their ongoing contributions to the field of economics.