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National Bureau of Economic Research

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Investment Effects of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act figure

Investment Effects of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 was the most significant reform to corporate taxation in the US in nearly four decades. It reduced the top corporate income tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, increased investment incentives by making equipment investment fully tax-deductible, and changed the tax treatment of US businesses’ overseas income. The various changes in tax rules affected different firms in different ways, creating cross-firm heterogeneity in the net effect on investment incentives. In Tax Policy and Investment in a Global Economy (NBER Working Paper 32180), Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Matthew Smith, Owen Zidar, and Eric Zwick use firm-level data on tax returns to study how the legislation affected both the domestic and foreign investment of...

From the NBER Bulletin on Health

Early-Life Lead Exposure and Old-Age Longevity Figure

Early-Life Lead Exposure and Old-Age Longevity

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In the early decades of the twentieth century, many American cities installed municipal water systems. A wide range of materials were used for pipes, but lead was a common choice due to its durability, ease of installation, and relatively low incidence of leaks. In Toxified to the Bone: Early-Life and Childhood Exposure to Lead and Men’s Old-Age Mortality (NBER Working Paper 31957), Jason Fletcher and Hamid Noghanibehambari show that the use of lead pipes in these systems had detrimental effects on long-term health among residents of affected cities. 

The study examines the impact of early-life exposure to these lead pipes on longevity at older ages…

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

Unemployment in Informal Labor Markets in Developing Countries Figure

Unemployment in Informal Labor Markets in Developing Countries

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Developing countries typically exhibit low rates of rural wage employment. For example, in India, male workers whose primary source of earnings is wage labor report working on only 46 percent of days per year. Bangladesh has a similarly low 55 percent rate of employment among landless males, and the rates are even lower in sub-Saharan Africa.

What do these low employment rates mean? One possibility is that they reflect extremely high involuntary unemployment. Alternatively, the rates could be an outcome of reasonably well functioning labor markets in which workers are simply choosing self-employment, which tends to be high in poor countries. These two possibilities have drastically different implications for understanding how well labor markets work and what role, if…

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…

From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability

Social Security and Retirement around the World

Social Security and Retirement around the World

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Over the past 25 years, labor force participation at older ages has increased dramatically. In the 12 countries that are part of the NBER’s International Social Security (ISS) project, participation among those aged 60 to 64 has risen by an average of over 20 percentage points for men and over 25 percentage points for women.

In The Effects of Reforms on Retirement Behavior: Introduction and Summary (NBER Working Paper 31979), authors Axel Börsch-Supan and Courtney Coile report on the most recent work of the ISS project. The current analysis builds on previous project phases which showed that changes in health and education could…

Featured Working Papers

Using the 2019 riots in Chile as a quasi-natural experiment that affected consumer demand, S. Borağan AruobaAndrés FernándezDaniel GuzmánErnesto Pastén, and Felipe Saffie show that supermarket pricing is consistent with a “menu cost” model in which sellers consider both current and future market conditions when setting prices. 

Automation can account for more than half of the increase in between-group inequality in the United States since 1980, and automation-driven rent dissipation offset more than 60 percent of the productivity gains from automation in that time, a study by Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo finds.

The size of an institution’s corporate bond holdings influences how actively it monitors its equity positions and contributes to its incentive to be an engaged investor, Todd A. Gormley and Manish Jha find.

Applying machine learning techniques a dataset of 35 million debit card transactions, Umang KhetanJetson Leder-LuisJialan Wang, and Yunrong Zhou find that state-level identity verification reduced payouts to suspicious cards by 27 percent, while nonsuspicious cards were largely unaffected. 

Using New York State data from 2011 through 2021, Coleman DrakeDylan NagyMatthew D. Eisenberg, and David Slusky find that medical cannabis availability reduced the number of past-month self-reported poor mental health days by 3.4 percentage points — a drop of about one tenth — among adults 65 and above.

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Research Spotlights

NBER researchers discuss their work on subjects of wide interest to economists, policymakers, and the general public. Recordings of more-detailed presentations, keynote addresses, and panel discussions at NBER conferences are available on the Lectures page.

Research Spotlight
An investigation of the role of anonymity in online communication and social media posting.    ...
Research Spotlight
In recognition of Black History Month, Research Associate Conrad Miller of the University of California, Berkeley,...
Research Spotlight
In recognition of Black History Month, Research Associate Trevon Logan of The Ohio State University, who directs the...
Research Spotlight
A growing fraction of US medical care is delivered through integrated healthcare systems that include many medical...
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