1. Health Services as Credence Goods: A Field Experiment by Felix Gottschalk, Wanda Mimra and Christian Waibel (ETH Zurich – CER-ETH – Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich)

2. The 7 Reasons Most Machine Learning Funds Fail (Presentation Slides) by Marcos Lopez de Prado (Guggenheim Partners, LLC; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Harvard University – RCC)

3. The Minimal Persuasive Effects of Campaign Contact in General Elections: Evidence from 49 Field Experiments by Joshua Kalla (University of California, Berkeley) and David E. Broockman (Stanford Graduate School of Business)

4. 2017 Global Blockchain Benchmarking Study by Garrick Hileman (Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Judge Business School; Centre for Macroeconomics, London School of Economics) and Michel Rauchs (Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance)

The new research on use, testing and future intentions regarding blockchain technology builds on our cryptocurrency-focussed study, which we published earlier this year. Cryptocurrency and blockchain are two of the most heavily-hyped new technologies in recent times, and we felt we could make a contribution by benchmarking levels of adoption and other measures. Our empirically driven insights were derived largely from non-public data entrusted to us by hundreds of central banks, various public sector institutions, firms and individuals. The positive response to our research speaks to both the overall level of interest in these topics as well as a dearth of empirical data that can aid researchers and other stakeholders looking to cut through the hype. These benchmarking studies present a snapshot of current activity levels and sentiment, which are of immediate use to academics, policymakers and industry, and which can also be utilised in future temporal analysis. We look forward to continuing this work in the years ahead. – Garrick Hileman

5. Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills? by Hendrik Bessembinder (Arizona State University)