National Bureau of Economic Research
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Race, Ethnicity, and Economic Statistics for the 21st Century
news article
Randall Akee, Lawrence F. Katz, and Mark Loewenstein, editors.
The increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the US population raises the question of whether the race and ethnicity categories and definitions used by federal statistical agencies to create demographic statistics on which government officials, business decision-makers, and private citizens rely fully the changing population. Official definitions of existing race and ethnic groups do not always command wide agreement, and over time, some definitions that were once widely accepted may become less so based on political, legal, and social factors. Comparable measures of race and ethnicity…
A research summary from the monthly NBER Digest
The Economic Costs of Noise Pollution from Aircraft and Traffic
article
In Planes Overhead: How Airplane Noise Impacts Home Values (NBER Working Paper 34431), Florian Allroggen, R. John Hansman, Christopher R. Knittel, Jing Li, Xibo Wan, and Juju Wang examine how changes in aircraft noise exposure affect residential property values near Boston Logan International, Chicago O'Hare International, and Seattle-Tacoma International airports. The researchers leverage the Federal Aviation Administration's…
From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries
New Developments in Financial Markets: The Digital Revolution; Fintechs; Buy Now, Pay Later; and Geopolitics
article
We are witnessing a transformative era in financial markets, driven by the digital revolution and the proliferation of data. Digital footprints now accompany virtually every financial transaction, creating new opportunities for data collection and analysis across individuals, firms, and governments. This surge in data availability is reshaping how financial products are offered, how risk is assessed, and how policies are designed.
This summary highlights four strands of recent research that illustrate these shifts. The first explores how the public provision of a digital payment infrastructure can expand access to formal credit—particularly for underserved populations. The second examines how private sector innovation, such as Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) lending, leverages digital data to reshape consumer credit. The third…
From the NBER Bulletin on Health
Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic
article
Death rates due to drug poisonings began to surge in the US in the mid-1990s, marking the emergence of an epidemic that has persisted for three decades. The health consequences have been stark, with annual deaths exceeding 100,000 since 2021.
In Prescription for Disaster: The SSDI Rate, Pain, and Prescribing Practices (NBER Working Paper 34265), William N. Evans and Ethan M. J. Lieber examine characteristics of counties in 1990—prior to the surge—that predict the county-level severity of opioid deaths after 2000. After considering a wide range of potential determinants, they focus on one factor: the percentage of the working-age population...
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
Cooper Howes, Marc Dordal i Carreras, Olivier Coibion, and Yuriy Gorodnichenko find that the FOMC Chair's policy preference passes through almost one-for-one into the committee's final decision, while other members' influence is much smaller. With each dissent, dissenting FOMC members experience a nearly 20 percent reduction in the passthrough of their preferences into future decisions.
Kory Kroft, Isaac Norwich, Matthew J. Notowidigdo, and Stephen Tino find that foreign workers who obtain Canadian permanent residency experience a 21.7 percentage point increase in job-to-job transitions and a 5.7 percent increase in earnings, on average.
The EU's Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, which classified funds by sustainability level starting in March 2021, had no significant effect on investment flows. About 86 percent of the greenest funds had explicit sustainability mandates before the regulation, making the disclosures redundant, according to Hunt Allcott, Mark L. Egan, Paul Smeets, and Hanbin Yang.
Business Development Companies (BDCs) are a major segment of the $1.3 trillion private credit market and private equity affiliated BDCs account for about 70 percent of its growth between 2001 and 2023, according to David T. Robinson and Melanie Wallskog.
A one-standard-deviation increase in local broadband internet access was associated with more than a 9 percent increase in adolescent suicide ideation in the US over the period 2009–2019. Girls also report increased cyberbullying and body dissatisfaction, and boys, reduced sleep, according to Brandyn F. Churchill and Kathryn R. Johnson.
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