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Lessons for Economists from the Pandemic
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It is an honor to be here today; I owe my love of economics to the Bureau as well as my many friends and colleagues. Marty [Martin] Feldstein was one of the people who made it such a special place. I enjoyed seeing him around the Bureau, learning public finance from him, and briefly serving as his research assistant. I’d sit in his office, in awe of his incredible intellect and economic insights, and be completely distracted by the hilarious cartoons he had framed in his office. My favorite was the one in which Marty is depicted rowing in the wrong direction in a skiff while President Reagan yells “Feldstein!” They all reflected his steadfast willingness to speak his mind, to “speak truth to power,” even to the president of the United States...
From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship
“Third Places” Boost Local Economic Activity
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Sociologists have argued that “third places” like cafés, which provide opportunities for individuals to socialize and exchange ideas outside of home and work, improve neighborhood life. But what about the relationship between such places and economic activity? In Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés (NBER Working Paper 32604), researchers Jinkyong Choi, Jorge Guzman, and Mario L. Small use data on US business registrations between 1990 and 2022 from the Startup Cartography Project to examine whether the opening of a Starbucks in a neighborhood with no previous cafés affects local entrepreneurship...
A research summary from the monthly NBER Digest
A Global Perspective on Industrial Policy and the Semiconductor Industry
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In 2022, Congress passed and President Biden signed the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act, which included tens of billions of dollars in grants and loans for production facilities and research, as well as new investment tax credits for domestic semiconductor manufacturing plants. The recent rise of similar subsidies in other nations has raised concerns about an international subsidy race and questions about the economic rationale for such policies.
In Industrial Policy in the Global Semiconductor Sector (NBER Working Paper 32651), researchers Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Réka Juhász, Nathan J. Lane, Giulia Lo Forte, and Jeff Thurk examine the history of government support...
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson Awarded 2024 Nobel Prize
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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…
From the NBER Bulletin on Health
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 Bögl, Jasmin Moshfegh, Petra 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 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...
Featured Working Papers
The stock market returns of firms that supply decarbonization services to other businesses are positively correlated with carbon prices, but negatively correlated with carbon price uncertainty, suggesting that firms may delay investments in decarbonization when faced with uncertainty about the future costs of emissions, Maximilian Fuchs, Johannes Stroebel, and Julian Terstegge find.
A 1 percentage point increase in work from home (WFH) occupations increases full-time employment for individuals with a physical disability by 1.1 percent, according to Nicholas Bloom, Gordon B. Dahl, and Dan-Olof Rooth, who report that the move to WFH increased the supply of workers with a disability.
Wildfire smoke accounts for 18 percent of US ambient PM2.5 concentrations, 0.42 percent of deaths, and 0.69 percent of emergency room visits among adults aged 65 and over, Nolan H. Miller, David Molitor, and Eric Zou find.
A nationally representative sample of homeowners from 1974-2021 shows that Black and Hispanic homeowners earn higher but more volatile rates of return on owner-occupied housing than White homeowners, according to a study by Rebecca Diamond and William F. Diamond.
Analyzing over 400,000 cases from 1985 to 2020, Alma Cohen and Rajeev H. Dehejia find that panels of Democratic judges are 6.9 percentage points more likely to reverse Republican than Democratic trial judges, and Republican panels are 3.6 percentage points less likely to reverse fellow Republican judges.
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