Research
The NBER conducts and disseminates independent, cutting-edge, non-partisan research that advances economic knowledge and informs policy makers and the business community.
New NBER Papers
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Working Paper
We examine how peers influence the allegiances of West Point cadets in the American Civil War. Specifically, we...
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Working Paper
This paper reexamines the Phillips and Beveridge curves to explain the inflation surge in the U.S. during the 2020s....
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Working Paper
The central tension in securities regulation is between protecting investors and enabling broad capital formation....
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Working Paper
We analyse the importance of climate-related investment using a large economy-wide survey of UK firms. Over half of...
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Working Paper
We make randomized firm-to-firm referrals between 700 supplier and client firms in the industry producing the Chinese...
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The Digest
The Digest is a free monthly publication featuring non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest.
Article
Average property insurance premiums have risen by more than 30 percent since 2020, and there is wide variation by location. Premiums have risen the most for homeowners in areas with the highest risk of natural disasters such as hurricanes or wildfires.While premiums have always been higher in riskier locations, the relationship between disaster risk and premiums has grown stronger over time. If present trends in the incidence of natural disasters continue, premiums are...
Article
Protracted periods in foster care can lead to negative long-term outcomes for children. Many states have tried to shorten foster care stays by moving children into either permanent adoptive homes or kinship care. While foster parents receive financial support for the children in their care, adoptive parents or kin guardians often receive less — or no — support. In Financial Incentives for Adoption and Kin Guardianship Improve Achievement for Foster Children (NBER...
The Reporter
The Reporter is a free quarterly publication featuring program updates, affiliates writing about their research, and news about the NBER.
Article
Author(s):
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...
Article
Author(s):
In the process of human development, what happens in the early years — including the first thousand days after conception — is of key importance for determining life-cycle outcomes. Early outcomes, however, are not fixed at birth or determined exclusively by genetics; they are influenced by a variety of factors, including parental behaviors, the environments children live in, and policy interventions. Furthermore, human development is a multidimensional process, with...
The Bulletin on Retirement & Disability
The Bulletin on Retirement and Disability summarizes research in the NBER's Retirement and Disabiy Research Center. A quarterly, it is distributed digitally and is free.
Article
Social Security Disability (SSD) program beneficiaries, like other consumers, have been negatively affected by inflation over the past several years. In a survey from June of 2023, more than half (59 percent) of SSD program beneficiaries reported higher prices for the disability-related goods and services they need to purchase, and more than one-quarter reported reducing food spending to cover disability-related costs, Zachary Morris and Stephanie Rennane found in...
Article
Despite the US’s well-established banking system, a significant share of the population has limited access to basic financial services that facilitate saving, investing, and preparing for retirement. In Financial Inclusion, Inequality, and Retirement Trends among Older Workers (NBER RDRC Paper NB22-16), Isaac Marcelin and Wei Sun study how financial inclusion affects household wellbeing.The researchers use data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Health and...
The Bulletin on Health
The Bulletin on Health summarizes recent NBER Working Papers pertaining to health topics. It is distributed digitally three times a year and is free.
Article
As the population ages, the need for surrogate decision-makers for patients near the end of their lives is rising. When hospitalized older adults are unable to actively participate in decisions about their care, surrogates must make choices, often with limited information. Advance care planning with written directives may improve surrogate decision-making, but directives have limitations: preferences may change after completion, directions may not apply to the ultimate...
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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...
The Bulletin on Entrepreneurship
Introducing recent NBER entrepreneurship research and the scholars who conduct it
Article
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...
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In Stock Market Wealth and Entrepreneurship (NBER Working Paper 32643), Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Plamen T. Nenov, Vitor Santos, and Alp Simsek evaluate the relationship between the performance of a household’s stock market portfolio and the likelihood that someone in that household launches an entrepreneurial venture. They analyze administrative data from Norway’s shareholder register and compute the holdings of every Norwegian household in all...
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