National Bureau of Economic Research

The US capital gains tax is realization based, which means that taxes are due when appreciated assets are sold. Critics of this approach argue that it allows asset holders, such as corporate founders, to defer their tax obligations, sometimes indefinitely. An alternative approach, taxing gains on accrual, would require asset holders to value their assets periodically and to pay tax on the gain since the last valuation. Critics of this approach argue that it could force founders to surrender ownership stakes just to pay tax bills, potentially discouraging startup formation. In Dilution vs. Risk Taking: Capital Gains Taxes and Entrepreneurship (NBER Working Paper 34512), Eduardo M. Azevedo, Florian Scheuer, Kent Smetters, and Min Yang examine how shifting from realization-based to accrual-based capital gains...

Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Eric Budish, Cécile Gaubert, Bryan S. Graham, Nathaniel Hendren, Anil K. Kashyap, Edward Miguel, David Romer, and Francesco Trebbi were elected fellows of the Econometric Society.

Ran Abramitzky received an honorary doctorate from the University of Southern Denmark.

Nikhil Agarwal received the 2025 Infosys Science Foundation Prize.

Lee J. Alston received the 2025 Jonathan Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History from the Economic...

Research Associate Andrea Eisfeldt, who holds the Laurence D. and Lori W. Fink Endowed Chair in Finance at the University of California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Business, has agreed to join Sydney Ludvigson as co-director of the NBER Asset Pricing Program. Eisfeldt’s research ranges widely and includes important contributions on market liquidity, the operation of over-the-counter markets, the role of intangibles in asset pricing, and the interplay between macroeconomics and finance. She is the Vice President-Elect of the Western Finance Association and Vice President of the American Finance Association.

Besides Asset Pricing, Eisfeldt is also affiliated with the NBER’s Corporate Finance and Economic...

Between 2004 and 2022, the share of community colleges offering bachelor's degrees increased from 2.1 percent to 16.5 percent, and the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by community colleges more than quadrupled. Twenty-four states now authorize these programs, which aim to provide more affordable and geographically accessible pathways to bachelor's credentials, particularly for underrepresented minority and low-income students who have historically enrolled at community colleges in disproportionate numbers.

In Community College Bachelor’s Degrees: How CCB Graduates’ Earnings Compare to AAs and BAs (NBER Working Paper 34684), Riley K. Acton, Camila Morales, Kalena Cortes, Julia A. Turner, and Lois Miller provide the first comprehensive national...

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are immunotherapy drugs that mobilize the patient’s immune system to detect and attack cancer cells. They are considered a breakthrough development in cancer care, but are very expensive, with a full course of treatment costing more than $150,000 per patient. In The Impact of Immunotherapy on Reductions in Cancer Mortality: Evidence from Medicare (NBER Working Paper 34317), Danea Horn, Abby E. Alpert, Mark Duggan, and Mireille Jacobson use Medicare claims data to evaluate the impact of the first ICIs on healthcare use, costs, and mortality among beneficiaries diagnosed with...

Over the past three decades trade policy has profoundly shaped the structure of production, employment, and welfare across countries. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the recent resurgence of tariff protectionism illustrate how deeply globalization and policy choices are intertwined. Evaluating their effects requires quantitative frameworks that capture how shocks to both technology and policy propagate through supply chains, labor markets, and international linkages.

Our research develops tractable general equilibrium models to quantify how shocks such as tariffs affect economies—both in the aggregate and across workers, regions, and sectors. These frameworks extend the Ricardian model of trade to include…