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The Digest

AI and the Performance of Workers with Disabilities
Article
Workers with disabilities face persistent disadvantages in labor markets, including lower employment rates, wage gaps, and discrimination. Technologies that directly raise worker productivity have the potential to improve inclusion while aligning with employers’ financial incentives. In China, food delivery platforms have become a significant source of employment for disabled workers, making them a useful setting for examining this issue.In Empowering Inclusive Work (NBER...

Where Immigrants Settle and US Economic Growth
Article
Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants arrived in the United States. Economists have long debated how that wave shaped American growth, typically pointing out two channels: immigrants enlarged the labor force and the consumer market, and they brought skills and knowledge from abroad. In Immigration, Innovation, and the Geography of Growth (NBER Working Paper 35392), Costas Arkolakis, Sun Kyoung Lee, and Michael Peters add a third channel that has drawn far...

The Reporter

Social Security Reform in an Era of Fiscal Deficits 18th Annual Feldstein Lecture, July 29, 2026
Article
Author(s): Mark Duggan
I am deeply honored to be here with you today to deliver the 2026 Martin Feldstein lecture. I first met Marty more than 30 years ago in the Fall of 1995 as a graduate student in his Public Economics course. I learned so much from him during that course about Social Security and many other topics including individual and corporate income taxation, unemployment insurance, and public goods. I also was fortunate during the next three years of my graduate studies to serve as a...

Experiences, Expectations, and Asset Prices
Article
Author(s): Stefan Nagel
Asset prices are inherently forward-looking. Stock prices reflect investors’ expectations of dividends many years into the future. Prices of long-term bonds reflect investors’ expectations of future short-term interest rates and inflation over the life of the bond. To understand why asset prices fluctuate, one must understand the forces that shape investor expectations. This is a fundamental question in asset pricing and macrofinance.Models with full-information rational...

The Bulletin on Health

How Inspection Timing Affects Care Quality in US Nursing Homes
Article
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...

Health Effects of Managed Care Delivery for Medicaid’s Long-Term Services and Supports
Article
With the aging of the US population, demand for medical and nonmedical assistance with basic daily activities is high and rising. Medicaid bears over 60 percent of the costs of this assistance, paying $255 billion in 2022 for long-term services and supports (LTSS). In response to these costs, some state Medicaid programs have shifted delivery of these services from fee-for-service to managed care. The shift to a managed care model for delivery of long-term services and...

The Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

Who Gets Ahead in Venture Capital: New Evidence from 100,000 Investors' Careers
Article
Firms that were initially backed by venture capitalists account for 41 percent of US stock market capitalization, seven of the ten largest US companies by market value at the end of 2025, and 62 percent of public companies' R&D spending. Venture capital (VC) investing relies heavily on individual judgment, as investors try to identify promising startups and help guide them toward success.   In Human Capital in Venture Capital: Evidence from 100,000 Venture...

Entrepreneurship Training Can Help Founders Learn When to Quit
Article
Entrepreneurship training is generally intended to improve founders’ chances of success. It may also create value by helping entrepreneurs recognize when a venture no longer warrants further investment of time and resources. If so, effective training could cause some startups to shut down sooner even as it improves outcomes for others. In Learning to Quit? A Multi-Year, Multi-Site Field Experiment with Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurs (NBER Working Paper 34755), Esther...

The Bulletin on the Economics of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias

Probable Dementia and Health Insurance Choices
Article
Nearly one in ten older Americans lives with dementia, a condition that gradually erodes memory and the cognitive skills needed for complex decision-making. Even though Medicare coverage is nearly universal among this age group, traditional Medicare alone leaves significant gaps as it does not cover dental, vision, or hearing care, and it carries substantial cost-sharing. To fill these gaps, beneficiaries must actively choose among several insurance options—enrolling in...

Employment and Cognitive Decline
Article
 Many workers leave the labor force well before the traditional retirement age of 65. In Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks (NBER Working Paper 35117), Noah Arman Kouchekinia, David Neumark, and Tim A. Bruckner investigate whether early retirement is associated with an increased risk of cognitive decline. They use data from the Health and Retirement Study, a long-running biennial survey of older Americans, for the period...