In this page, I list papers that explored bold ideas in economics at the time of its publication. Note that some of them become very controversial due to the nature of the paper, i.e. they tried to analyze the very political and controversial issue or challenge the conventional wisdom

1. The abortion ban decreases the educational attainment of the child born during the ban period.

Cristian Pop-Eleches, "The Impact of an Abortion Ban on Socioeconomic Outcomes of Children: Evidence from Romania", Journal of Political Economy, 2006

2. Availability of home appliance in early 20th century, not the end of WWII, caused baby boom; challenging the conventional wisdom on baby boom.

Jerremy Greenwood, Ananth Seshadri and Ouillaume Andenbroucke, "Baby boom and baby bust", American Economic Review 2006.

3. Due to the incentive introduced by taxation (child allowance in the income tax code ), people change the timing of birth of their children

Stacy Dickert-Conlin and Amitabh Chandra, "Taxes and the Timing of Births", Journal of Political Economy, 1999, pp161-177

4. People change their timing of death to reduce the burden of the inheritance tax

Wojciech Kopczuk and Joel Slemrod,"Dying to Save Taxes: Evidence from Estate-Tax Returns on the Death Elasticity", Review of Economics and Statistics, 2006

5. The prevalence of HIV in Africa is likely to increase the living standard of Africa, not to drease the living standard, due the decrease of the population growth rate

Young, Alwyn. (2005a) “The Gift of the Dying: The Tragedy of AIDS and the Welfare
of Future African Generations.” Quarterly Journal of Economics. 120 (May 2005): 243-
266.

6. Availability of "Pill" affected women's carrer choice in 1970s.

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, "The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women’s Career and Marriage Decisions", Journal of Political Economy, 2002

7. The share of the capitalized value of inheritance in the total wealth in 2050 might reach 100% in France suggesting a strong inheritance might be needed.

Thomas Pikkety, ON THE LONG-RUN EVOLUTION OF INHERITANCE: FRANCE 1820—2050

Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2011.