National Bureau of Economic Research

Research Associates Robert Hall and Michael Woodford have been awarded the 2026 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their research on the "microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization." The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in announcing the prize, explained that they "have developed new macroeconomic models that have significantly improved our ability to implement effective stabilization policy" and "provided us with a stable theoretical foundation for the models that are now used by central banks and governments around…

Workers lose proficiency when they stop practicing a skill, yet directly measuring this “forgetting” and the subsequent relearning process has proved difficult. In Physician Learning and Forgetting: Evidence from the US Military (NBER Working Paper 35502), Trevor Fitzgerald, Atul Gupta, and Stephen D. Schwab examine surgeons and obstetricians/gynecologists in the US Military Health System (MHS). These physicians are periodically sent on combat deployments that last about six months on average.

These deployments are…

Cities, like portfolios, reflect a balance between concentration and diversification. Some places build their fortunes on a narrow set of industries and reap large gains when those sectors expand. Others spread activity more broadly and grow more steadily. At first glance, the trade-off seems familiar: Higher returns come with higher risk. But unlike financial portfolios, cities cannot be easily rebalanced. Their economic structure is embedded in physical capital, skills, and local networks, which adjust only slowly over time. This creates a distinct dynamic: Places that grow rapidly around a single industry often struggle long after that industry has faded. The puzzle is not why they decline, since shrinking demand for their core activity is explanation enough, but why they fail to adapt.

The answer lies in how growth happens…

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...