National Bureau of Economic Research

In recent decades, cities, states, and the federal government have expanded funding for universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) programs. These programs are large and free. The policy logic underlying UPK expansion is that many parents may lack access to or underinvest in pre-kindergarten childcare and that the educational benefits for children and expanded labor market opportunities for parents combine to outweigh the costs of public provision.

In Parents’ Earnings and the Returns to Universal Pre-Kindergarten (NBER Working Paper 33038), John Eric Humphries, Christopher Neilson, Xiaoyang Ye, and Seth D. Zimmerman study whether...

Axel Börsch-Supan and Courtney Coile, editors.

Employment among older men and women has increased dramatically in recent years, reversing a downward trend in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: The Effects of Reforms on Retirement Behavior examines how changing retirement incentives have reshaped labor force participation trends among older workers. 

The chapters feature country-specific analyses for Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain,…

The Market Design Working Group, established in 2009 under the leadership of Susan Athey and Parag Pathak, is a preeminent research forum in the field of market design. The working group meets annually, alternating between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Palo Alto, California, to present research that bridges theoretical economics and practical applications, all focused on what The Economist aptly characterized as “an intelligently designed invisible hand.” Research in market design has been celebrated in academic circles, as evidenced by recognitions like the 2012 Nobel Prize for work on matching markets and the 2020 Nobel Prize for auction theory, and has also been instrumental in catalyzing tangible reforms in real-world institutions and markets.

One feature that sets market design apart…

In Health Inequality and Economic Disparities by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender (NBER Working Paper 32971 an earlier version, NBER RDRC Paper NB23-11), Nicolò Russo, Rory McGee, Mariacristina De Nardi, Margherita Borella, and Ross Abram use data from the Health and Retirement Study over the period 1996–2018 to evaluate measures of health inequality in middle age and the consequences of such health disparities. 

They consider two health measures: self-reported health status, measured by the response to a survey question that asks individuals to rate their health as excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor, and...

Digital health technologies, such as remote monitoring devices and telemedicine services, have attracted considerable interest due to their potential to reduce healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes. These innovations could, however, exacerbate health disparities if adoption rates are lower among underserved communities.

In Equity and Efficiency in Technology Adoption: Evidence from Digital Health (NBER Working Paper 32992), researchers Itzik Fadlon, Parag Agnihotri, Christopher Longhurst, and Ming Tai-Seale analyze a remote...

Sociologists have argued that “third places” like cafés, which provide opportunities for individuals to socialize and exchange ideas outside of home and work, improve neighborhood life. But what about the relationship between such places and economic activity? In Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés (NBER Working Paper 32604), researchers Jinkyong Choi, Jorge Guzman, and Mario L. Small use data on US business registrations between 1990 and 2022 from the Startup Cartography Project to examine whether the opening of a Starbucks in a neighborhood with no previous cafés affects local entrepreneurship...