National Bureau of Economic Research
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Seven Researchers Receive Postdoctoral Fellowships, 2024-25
news article
Seven postdoctoral scholars have been awarded NBER fellowships for the 2024–25 academic year, following widely disseminated calls for applications.
Woojin Kim, who received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and Chika O. Okafor, who received his PhD from Harvard University, will hold fellowships in aging and health economics supported by the National Institute on Aging. Kim is studying the interaction between physicians political allegiance and practice patterns, while Okafor will investigate how the criminal legal system impacts health outcomes and disparities.
Sean Kiely, who received his PhD from the University of California, Davis, will hold a fellowship in agricultural economics supported by the US Department of Agriculture. His research focuses on the impact of information and food labeling…
From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability
![Disability Insurance (DI) Benefits and Household Composition figure](/sites/default/files/styles/homepage_feature_horizontal/public/2024-08/NB23-07_figure_Final%20%281%29-01_0.jpg?itok=nsI7nl34)
Disability Insurance Benefits and Household Composition
article
Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) “family maximum” rules cap the benefits that can be paid to a disabled worker’s family at the lower of 85 percent of the worker’s average indexed monthly earnings and 150 percent of their primary insurance amount. The effect of these rules is that family payments are the same whether a DI beneficiary has one or many dependents, and when DI beneficiaries have low benefit determinations, there are no payments for dependents at all.
In Understanding the Disparate Impacts of the Social Security Disability Insurance Family Maximum Rules (NBER RDRC Paper NB23-07), Timothy J. Moore examines how the economic wellbeing of DI beneficiary...
Six Affiliates Take Leave for Public Service
news article
NBER affiliates Anusha Chari, Matthew Kraft, and Laura Wherry are currently serving as senior economists at the Council of Economic Advisers. Chari, affiliated with the International Finance and Macroeconomics program, is a Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Kraft, an Economics of Education program affiliate, is an Associate Professor of Education at Brown University. Wherry, affiliated with the Economics of Health program, is an Associate Professor at New York University’s Graduate School of Public Service.
Three other affiliates have…
A research summary from the monthly NBER Digest
![Effects of Texas' Top Ten Percent College Admissions Plan figure](/sites/default/files/styles/homepage_feature_horizontal/public/2024-07/w32372.jpg?itok=QdZwjTLW)
Effects of Texas' Top Ten Percent College Admissions Plan
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While some colleges use transparent criteria such as grade point averages (GPAs) and class ranks to evaluate applicants, many add elements such as applicant essays and letters of recommendation to their admissions process. Broader criteria allow colleges to consider more information about applicants at the cost of increased opacity of the admissions process. This lack of transparency may deter applicants who are uncertain about their chances of satisfying vague requirements.
In Transparency and Percent Plans (NBER Working Paper 32372), Adam Kapor studies the Texas Top Ten Percent Plan, a policy dating back to 1997 that guarantees admission to any Texas public college to high school students...
From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries
![Clearing the Air: Historical Air Pollution and Health figure](/sites/default/files/styles/homepage_feature_horizontal/public/2024-07/Clay%20and%20Severnini%20_%20Figure%201%20_%20Final-01.jpg?itok=ud5jbhGv)
Clearing the Air: Historical Air Pollution and Health
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Air pollution has serious and longstanding negative effects on human health. The primary focus of research on air pollution in the United States since the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 has been the health implications of particulate matter. In comparison, there has been relatively little work on air pollution and health in historical periods, even though air pollution was much higher in earlier times than it is today. Research on historical air pollution can provide new evidence on the health consequences of air pollution in the United States and offer insights that may be relevant for policymaking in settings with high levels of air pollution, such as developing countries.
Our research focuses on four topics related to historical air pollution and health: the costs and benefits of expansion of coal-fired…
From the NBER Bulletin on Health
![Why Do More Educated Communities Have Better Health Outcomes? figure](/sites/default/files/styles/homepage_feature_horizontal/public/2024-07/w32346.jpg?itok=_XtC5s4T)
Why Do More Educated Communities Have Better Health Outcomes?
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Adults who live in more educated communities have lower mortality rates. In 2010, every 10 percentage point increase in an area’s share of adults with a college degree — equivalent to moving from the 25th to the 75th percentile of area education — was associated with 97 (8 percent) fewer deaths per 100,000 people. In Human Capital Spillovers and Health: Does Living around College Graduates Lengthen Life? (NBER Working Paper 32346), researchers Jacob H. Bor, David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser, and Ljubica Ristovska explore this relationship...
From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship
![Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurs’ Choice of Startup Location figure](/sites/default/files/styles/homepage_feature_horizontal/public/2024-05/w31634_BE_figure_Final%20%281%29-01.jpg?itok=OvWr8PiI)
Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurs’ Choice of Startup Location
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Immigrants play a significant role in the entrepreneurial landscape. In the United States, immigrants are 80 percent more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans. More than half of America's billion-dollar startup companies trace their roots to immigrant founders. There is limited research, however, on the factors that influence immigrants' decisions about where to locate their startup businesses.
In The Effect of Immigration Policy on Founding Location Choice: Evidence from Canada's Start-up Visa Program (NBER Working Paper 31634), Saerom Lee and Britta Glennon investigate the impact of Canada's Start-up Visa Program on US-based…
Featured Working Papers
When US states adopt paid sick leave requirements, payouts of workers’ compensation benefits decrease, though there are no observed reductions in workplace injury rates, according to a study by Xiuming Dong, Johanna Catherine Maclean, and David Powell.
The completion rate for graduate students entering programs at public universities in Texas in 2013 was 10 percentage points higher than that of students starting in 2004. There was wide variation across fields of study, for example 81 percent completed in law versus 53 percent in education, Jeffrey T. Denning and Lesley J. Turner find.
Criminal justice data from North Carolina and Ohio suggest that individuals who are given a year-long prison sentence experience a cumulative earnings decline of 13 percent over the five years that include their prison time, but little decline in employment or earnings thereafter, according to Andrew Garin, Dmitri K. Koustas, Carl McPherson, Samuel Norris, Matthew Pecenco, Evan K. Rose, Yotam Shem-Tov, and Jeffrey Weaver.
Consumer product markups increased by about 30 percent on average over the period 2006–19, largely because of decreases in marginal costs, according to analysis by Hendrik Döpper, Alexander MacKay, Nathan H. Miller, and Joel Stiebale. Consumer demands appear to have become less price sensitive over this period.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s elimination of federal charitable giving incentives for some income tax filers was associated with a decrease in charitable giving of about $20 billion annually, Xiao Han, Daniel M. Hungerman, and Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm find.
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