National Bureau of Economic Research
Latest from the NBER
Annual Report of Awards to NBER Affiliates, Spring 2026
news article
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...
Andrea Eisfeldt to Co-Direct Asset Pricing Program
news article
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...
A research summary from the monthly NBER Digest
The Earnings of Community College Bachelor’s Degree Graduates
article
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...
From the NBER Bulletin on Health
Immunotherapy Increases the Cost of Cancer Care but Reduces Mortality
article
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...
From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries
Quantitative Trade Policy in a Changing World
article
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…
From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship
Underwriting Based on Cash Flow Helps Younger Entrepreneurs Access Credit
article
Younger entrepreneurs are disadvantaged in small business loan markets because lenders rely heavily on personal credit scores, which favor long histories of repaying debt. In Modernizing Access to Credit for Younger Entrepreneurs: From FICO to Cash Flow (NBER Working Paper 33367), researchers Christopher M. Hair, Sabrina T. Howell, Mark J. Johnson, and Siena Matsumoto document this fact and show that younger entrepreneurs benefit from underwriting that augments personal credit scores (like FICO) with cash flow data. They analyze comprehensive…
Featured Working Papers
Among US households who chose to install residential air quality monitors, the installation reduced indoor PM2.5 concentrations by 2.5 µg/m3 within 12 weeks, driven primarily by air purifier adoption rather than changes in behavior like cooking, according to Benjamin Krebs and Matthew J. Neidell.
The Affordable Care Act reduced the peak insurance coverage loss following job loss from about 16 to 10 percentage points, with the largest improvements concentrated among middle-income workers previously most exposed to coverage disruptions, Jessamyn Schaller and Mariana Zerpa find.
Stephen B. Billings, Mark Hoekstra, and Gabriel Pons Rotger find that a one standard deviation improvement in neighborhood quality raises labor market outcomes by 0.08 standard deviations and reduces criminal conviction rates by 2.8 percent, with the employment effects driven entirely by job referrals from neighbors within a three-minute walk.
A 10 percent probability of losing two years of patent exclusivity reduces average project value by 6.5 percent, while a 30 percent probability of a 25 percent price-control-driven cash flow cut reduces it by 16.1 percent, implying a long-run R&D spending contraction of between 10 and 25 percent, according to Teresa Corzo Santamaria, Jose Portela, and Eduardo S. Schwartz.
Applying a genetically modified biofertilizer to farms in Kenya increased maize yields by up to 110 percent for farms with adequate soil nutrients, at a cost well below that of synthetic fertilizers needed to achieve equivalent gains, according to Tavneet Suri, Petar Madjarac, and Robert D. van der Hilst.
In the News
Recent citations of NBER research in the media
_______________________________________
Research Projects
Conferences
Books & Chapters
Through a partnership with the University of Chicago Press, the NBER publishes the proceedings of four annual conferences as well as other research studies associated with NBER-based research projects.
Videos
Recordings of presentations, keynote addresses, and panel discussions at NBER conferences are available on the Videos page.