National Bureau of Economic Research

Research Associate Melissa Dell of Harvard University and Ashesh Rambachan of MIT delivered the 2026 Methods Lectures on "Estimation and Inference with AI-Generated Data." They described both the rapidly expanding ways in which large language models and other AI tools are being used for economic measurement, as well as the new econometric issues that are presented by the analysis of these data. Their lectures provided an overview of the theory underlying some of the new econometric tools and illustrated their…

Multinational firms often sell nearly identical products across global markets. This raises the question of what happens when a government regulates a product in one country: Does that change propagate to the same product sold elsewhere? In Global Policy Spillovers: How Environmental Policies Propagate Through Product Attributes (NBER Working Paper 35197), Koichiro Ito, James M. Sallee, and Jonathan (Andrew) Smith study “attribute propagation”—the mechanism by which a domestic policy induces broader changes in...

The NBER Economics of Education Program covers topics related to education in a manner that is deeply informed by economic logic and empirical methods. The program draws upon theory from several fields including public, labor, development, and urban economics, as well as industrial organization. The program has 179 members and meets three times a year in Cambridge, Chicago, Stanford, and Washington. The average meeting attracts about 100 submissions for a program of about 10 papers. The program has a culture that combines rigor, constructive advice, and noteworthy collegiality.

Top North American universities are very well represented, but the Economics of Education draws participants from many states, countries, universities, and organizations. While the papers often analyze high-income countries’ policies, most of the…

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...