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Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson Awarded 2024 Nobel Prize
(L to R) Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson Awarded 2024 Nobel Prize

news article

Research associates Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity." The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained that the three scholars "contributed innovative research about what affects countries' economic prosperity." Their work highlights the critical role of political and economic institutions in affecting the evolution of living standards. It not only offers…

A research summary from the monthly NBER Digest

Returns to Port Infrastructure Investments

Returns to Port Infrastructure Investments

article

Ships carry nearly 80 percent of internationally traded goods, which makes port infrastructure essential to a well-functioning trading system. In Investment in Infrastructure and Trade: The Case of Ports (NBER Working Paper 32503), Giulia Brancaccio, Myrto Kalouptsidi, and Theodore Papageorgiou examine the returns to investments in port infrastructure.

The researchers analyze data on the universe of port calls between 2016 and 2021 by bulk carriers with a deadweight of more than 10,000 tons. They find that the average port call lasts 117 hours, one-third of which is waiting time...

From the NBER Bulletin on Health

Effects of Insurance Coverage on Infertility Treatments, Childbearing, and Wellbeing figure

Effects of Insurance Coverage on Infertility Treatments, Childbearing, and Wellbeing

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Between 1995 and 2010, the share of births in Sweden that involved assisted reproductive technologies (ART) rose from 2 to 10 percent. These treatments range from low-cost drugs to costly and invasive interventions, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF).

In The Economics of Infertility: Evidence from Reproductive Medicine (NBER Working Paper 32445), Sarah BöglJasmin MoshfeghPetra Persson, and Maria Polyakova provide new evidence on the consequences of infertility and the role of insurance coverage in household decisions to initiate treatment. Using administrative, population-wide data for the period 2006–2019, the researchers estimate the use of infertility treatment. They find that over the course of their fertile years...

From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability

Disability Insurance (DI) Benefits and Household Composition figure

Disability Insurance Benefits and Household Composition

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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...

From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries

 Organizational Approaches to Increased Worker Wellbeing and Productivity Figure

Organizational Approaches to Increased Worker Wellbeing and Productivity

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Negotiations between workers and firm management are a defining feature of labor markets around the world. By many measures, labor relations have deteriorated substantially in recent years, often leading to strikes. In the United States, there were nearly 350 labor actions last year, the most in two decades, followed by 124 in the early months of 2024. Most of these actions are related to differences over worker compensation, benefits, and amenities.

Organizational economics is premised on the notion that firms are not monoliths but rather groups of individuals attempting to coordinate actions towards a set of common goals. Firm performance, then, depends critically on the preferences, incentives, and constraints of individuals, and the nature of their interaction within the organization. Understanding these many factors can…

From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

 Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurs’ Choice of Startup Location figure

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

Data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System for the period 2004–21 show that an 8 percent increase in adult access to mental health and substance use treatment reduces child maltreatment reports by 1 percent, Mir M. AliThanh LuJohanna Catherine Maclean, and Angélica Meinhofer find. 

Contrary to the belief that seniors "age in place", Salla KalinAntoine B. Levy, and Mathilde Muñoz find that Portugal’s 2013 grant of full tax exemption for foreign-source pensioners induced substantial migration among wealthy and educated pensioners living in higher-tax countries in Europe. 

The stock market reaction to surprise monetary policy announcements by the Federal Open Market Committee is largely due to changes in the default-free term structure of yields, not changes in the equity premium, Stefan Nagel and Zhengyang Xu show. 

California’s highest-in-nation Earned Income Tax Credit supplement does not affect employment of low-skill single mothers due to unique aspects of its structure and to the state’s high minimum wage, according to a study by David Neumark and Zeyu Li.

During the Industrial Revolution, Britain sustained faster technological change and economic growth than comparable European countries, such as France, because British inventors worked on technologies that were more central in the innovation network, Lukas RosenbergerW. Walker Hanlon, and Carl Hallmann find. 

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Workshop
SlidesSupported by the Social Security Administration grant #RDR2300006
Video
Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant #G-2023-19618, Microsoft , and TD Management and Data Analytics Lab
Workshop
Supported by the Social Security Administration grants #RRC08098400, #DRC12000002, #RDR18000003, and #RDR2300006
Methods Lectures
Background Materials:Bajari, Patrick, Brian Burdick, Guido W. Imbens, Lorenzo Masoero, James McQueen, Thomas S. Richardson, and Ido M. Rosen. "Experimental Design in Marketplaces." Statistical Science 38, no. 3 (2023): 458-476....
Methods Lectures
Background Materials:backgroundAthey, Susan, Undral Byambadalai, Vitor Hadad, Sanath Kumar Krishnamurthy, Weiwen Leung, and Joseph Jay Williams. "Contextual bandits in a survey experiment on charitable giving: Within-experiment outcomes...
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