About

David N. Weil is the James and Merryl Tisch Professor of Economics at Brown University and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His work has extensively covered various aspects of economic growth, including the empirical determinants of income variation among countries, the contribution of health improvements to growth, the geographic determinants of development, the measurement of income inequality, the accumulation of physical capital, international technology transfer, population growth, and the use of satellite observation as a measurement tool. Weil has authored a textbook on growth that has been translated into six languages. In addition to his research on economic growth, Weil has written on demographic and health economics topics such as the economic impacts of malaria and salt iodization, population aging, Social Security, the gender wage gap, retirement, and the relationship between demographics and house prices. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990.

Research topics

• Economics
• Business
• Demographic economics
• Labour economics
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Knowledge and Confidence of Physician Assistant Students in Managing Patients with a Documented Penicillin Allergy

  Antibiotics · 2026-01-16

  articleOpen access

  Objective: Physician assistants (PAs) are frequently involved in managing acute bacterial infections in patients with documented penicillin (PCN) allergies. Inappropriate antibiotic choice in patients with existing allergies may place them at undue risk. This study aimed to assess the knowledge and confidence among PA students in managing patients with documented PCN allergies. Methods: An electronic survey was distributed to enrolled students in participating PA programs in North and South Carolina. The survey tool consisted of 20 questions with 13 focused on knowledge and confidence primarily scored on a 5-point Likert scale. Data were collected and protected via the REDCap® database. Primary objectives were knowledge of penicillin allergies and confidence in management decisions. Sufficient knowledge was considered a score of 80% or greater; adequate knowledge was considered 70% or greater on relevant assessments. Results: Overall, 406 students from 10 unique programs completed the survey. They were predominantly female (76%) with 43% in the first year of their program. The mean student knowledge score was 25.9%, and 30% of respondents achieved adequate knowledge. Respondents reported an average cross reactivity between penicillin and beta-lactams of 29% (10–63%), cefazolin 50% (24–75), ceftriaxone 29% (11–60), and carbapenems 26% (8–50). The majority of respondents (66.5%) reported high levels of confidence in managing patients with penicillin allergies. Conclusions: The study found significant discordance between PA students’ high level of confidence in assessing patients with a PCN allergy and their comparative knowledge. PA students are likely to avoid beta-lactam antibiotics when there is a documented penicillin allergy, regardless of the documented reaction or low likelihood of cross-reactivity. Further training and education will help to encourage appropriate prescribing in these high-risk patients.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Data and Code for: How Much Would Continued Low Fertility Affect the US Standard of Living?

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This data and code accompany the article "How Much Would Continued Low Fertility Affect the US Standard of Living?"

  OA PDFDOI

• How Much Would Continued Low Fertility Affect the US Standard of Living?

  The Journal of Economic Perspectives · 2026-02-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  I assess the effect of continued sub-replacement fertility on age-adjusted consumption per capita. Channels assessed include transfers from working-age adults to children and the elderly, the effect of the labor force growth rate on required capital investment, sustainability of government debt, the interaction of population size with fixed natural resources (including a clean environment), and the effect of population size on the speed of technological progress. To isolate the effect of low fertility from other ongoing demographic changes, I use simulation models as well as projections from the United Nations and Social Security Administration that vary fertility rates while holding other factors constant. My main finding is that the impact of low fertility is likely to be negative but small. In addition, this negative impact arrives only after a long adjustment period. An increase in fertility back to the replacement rate would lower the standard of living for several decades.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Data and Code for: How Much Would Continued Low Fertility Affect the US Standard of Living?

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-01-01

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This data and code accompany the article "How Much Would Continued Low Fertility Affect the US Standard of Living?"

  PublisherDOI

• Are Big Cities Important for Economic Growth?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Are Big Cities Important for Economic Growth?

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  Cities are often described as engines of economic growth.We assess this statement quantitatively.We focus on two mechanisms: a static agglomeration effect that makes production in bigger cities more efficient, and a dynamic effect whereby urban scale impacts the productivity of invention, which in turn determines the speed of technological progress for the country as a whole.Using estimates of these effects from the literature and MSA-level patent and population data since 1900, we ask how much lower US output would be in 2010 if city size had been limited to one million or one hundred thousand starting in 1900.These effects are small.If city sizes had been limited to one million people since 1900, output in 2010 would have been only 8% lower than its observed value.

  PublisherDOI

• Voluntary Minimum Wages: The Local Labor Market Effects of National Retailer Policies

  The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2025-03-05 · 7 citations

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT Low unionization rates, a falling real federal minimum wage, and outsourcing have hampered wage growth in the low-wage sector in the United States for several decades. In recent years (2014–2023), a number of large private retailers—including some of the largest employers in the United States—have opted to institute or raise company-wide, voluntary minimum wages (VMWs) for their employees. We use anonymized payroll data from a large credit bureau and a major payroll provider to study the effects of these national retailer policies on adopting employers’ own wages and employment as well as their spillovers to other employers in shared local labor markets, variously defined. Using stacked event studies centered around multiple VMW events and a continuous treatment variable defined as the gap between local-area wages and the company minimum, we find that VMWs result in sizable wage increases and reductions in turnover at the companies that implement them. Turning to wages at other companies, we estimate small, often economically negligible, spillover effects across multiple measures of exposure to VMWs and numerous definitions of relevant competitors, including firms connected by worker flows. Together, the evidence points to little role for strategic interactions in the transmission of large retailers’ wage policies to other firms. Voluntary minimum wage policies have affected over 3 million jobs at adopting employers, yet their impact on the broader labor market is limited.

  PublisherDOI

• FluoroMatch IM: An Interactive Software for PFAS Analysis by Ion Mobility Spectrometry

  Environmental Science & Technology · 2025-03-25 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are often present in complex mixtures at trace levels in environmental samples, posing difficulties for analytical chemists. Ion mobility offers highly replicable identifiers, enabling the use of community-based libraries for PFAS annotation in nontargeted analysis. Currently, limited software exists to leverage the capabilities of liquid chromatography ion mobility high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-IM-HRMS) for nontargeted analysis. FluoroMatch IM is a free vendor-neutral open-source tool for rapid annotation of PFASs in LC-IM-HRMS datasets. Annotation algorithms include collision cross-section (CCS) matching, formula prediction, homologous series detection, mass defect filtering, and accurate mass matching with a database of 194 PFAS ions that can be continuously expanded by the community. Results from FluoroMatch IM were compared to a targeted approach with a laboratory-prepared mixture of 63 PFASs and real wastewater samples. A nontarget workflow incorporating FluoroMatch IM revealed additional likely PFASs (n = 16) while confirming most targeted annotations (11/12) in wastewater samples. Validation of the standard mix showed a low false negative rate of 5% and a 5% false positive rate for features included in the CCS library, with a 0% false positive rate for features assigned confident scores. This study demonstrates the promise of FluoroMatch IM for streamlining PFAS analysis workflows.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Physical Capital

  2024-09-02

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Human Capital

  2024-09-02

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Emilio Depetris-Chauvín

  124 shared

• Ṣebnem Kalemli‐Özcan

  65 shared

• J. Vernon Henderson

  63 shared

• Adam Storeygard

  Tufts University

  62 shared

• John Τ. Dunlop

  45 shared

• Tim Squires

  42 shared

• Janice H. Hammond

  39 shared

• Frederick H Abernathy

  37 shared

Education

• PhD / Public Policy, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

  Harvard University

  1987

• Master of Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government

  Harvard University

  1985

• Bachelor of Science, NY School of Industrial and Labor Relations

  Cornell University

  1983