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The Digest

Inflation and Nominal Wage Adjustment
Article
When US consumer prices rose sharply between mid-2021 and late 2023, consumer sentiment fell to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis, even though unemployment remained low. Surveys found that a majority of Americans identified inflation as a major financial problem. Even well after price growth abated, in 2025, roughly 60 percent of Americans still reported that inflation was a pressing issue.In Sticky Wage Norms and the Real Wage Cost of Unexpected Inflation (...

Immigration and Productivity Growth in the OECD
Article
Birth rates across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries have fallen in recent decades and native working-age populations have begun to shrink. At the same time, immigration—particularly from lower- and middle-income countries outside the OECD—has risen sharply. It has become the main source of labor force growth in much of Europe. In Immigration and Macroeconomic Outcomes in OECD Countries (NBER Working Paper 35523), Gaetano Basso, ...

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

Why Has US Healthcare Expenditure Growth Slowed?
Article
Between 2010 and 2024, medical spending in the US grew from 17.2 percent of GDP to 18.0 percent. This growth was substantially below both historical precedent and actuarial projections by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). By 2024, annual healthcare expenditures were nearly $1 trillion (15 percent) below the 2010 projections. In Has the United States Bent the Health Care Cost Curve? (NBER Working Paper 35231), David M. Cutler and Lev R. Klarnet...

Cognitive Load and Treatment Decisions of Emergency Department Doctors
Article
Cognitive load for physicians in the emergency department (ED) can vary substantially depending on the number of patients they are treating and the complexity of those patients. In Thinking Versus Doing: Cognitive Capacity, Decision Making and Medical Diagnosis (NBER Working Paper 35034), researchers Benjamin R. Handel, Louis-Jonas Heizlsperger, Jonas Knecht, Jonathan T. Kolstad, Ulrike Malmendier, and Filip Matějka study how differences in cognitive load affect a provider’s...

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...