National Bureau of Economic Research

I am deeply honored to be here with you today to deliver the 2026 Martin Feldstein lecture. I first met Marty more than 30 years ago in the Fall of 1995 as a graduate student in his Public Economics course. I learned so much from him during that course about Social Security and many other topics including individual and corporate income taxation, unemployment insurance, and public goods. I also was fortunate during the next three years of my graduate studies to serve as a Teaching Fellow in both his Principles of Economics and American Economic Policy courses and to have him as one of my advisors on my PhD research. He was a phenomenal teacher and advisor who cared deeply about all of his students. This dedication extended to the entire academic economics profession as evidenced by his inspiring leadership for many years of the NBER…

Governments in many countries have expanded public childcare in part to help mothers remain attached to the workforce. Prior research has generally found that subsidized childcare raises mothers’ employment while children are young, but less is known about whether these effects persist once children have grown. In Investing in Mothers? The Long-Run Impact of a Universal Child Care Program on Maternal Work and Income (NBER Working Paper 35514), researchers Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin S. Milligan examine the long-run consequences of Quebec’s universal, heavily subsidized childcare program, introduced ...

Nearly one in ten older Americans lives with dementia, a condition that gradually erodes memory and the cognitive skills needed for complex decision-making. Even though Medicare coverage is nearly universal among this age group, traditional Medicare alone leaves significant gaps as it does not cover dental, vision, or hearing care, and it carries substantial cost-sharing. To fill these gaps, beneficiaries must actively choose among several insurance options—enrolling in Medicare Advantage, adding private supplemental insurance to traditional Medicare, or, for those with sufficiently low income and assets, applying for Medicaid. Beneficiaries may make changes during open enrollment each year and must re-enroll in private supplemental coverage or Medicare Advantage if their plan is no longer offered or they fail to pay premiums…

Nursing homes certified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to provide care and receive public reimbursement through Medicare and Medicaid are subject to mandatory annual inspections. While inspections are unannounced, they typically occur on an approximately yearly basis, as 74 percent of inspections take place between 40 and 60 weeks after the previous one. The average gap is around 53 weeks. Due to the cyclical nature of inspections, nursing home operators are able to anticipate when an inspection is likely and adjust their behavior accordingly. They appear to devote more effort to patient care when inspections are approaching.

In Predictably Unpredictable Inspections (NBER Working Paper 34491), Ashvin Gandhi, Andrew Olenski, and Maggie Shi study how the predictability of nursing home inspections shapes facility effort and patient...

Roughly one-quarter of new employer businesses in the United States are started by immigrants. Immigrant inventors have been responsible for approximately 23 percent of US patents produced since 1976 despite making up only 16 percent of the total US-based inventor population. Yet immigrant entrepreneurs usually do not build companies in isolation—many cofound startups alongside US-born entrepreneurs. In Native-Immigrant Entrepreneurial Synergies (NBER Working Paper 33804), Zhao Jin, Amir Kermani, and Timothy McQuade examine whether startups cofounded by immigrant and native entrepreneurs outperform those with founders from exclusively one...