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
What happens when the findings of a prominent medical study are overturned? Using a medical trial on breech births,...
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Working Paper
We study companies’ decisions about holding annual shareholder meetings on-line during the Covid pandemic, and...
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Working Paper
I review the academic literature on defined contribution retirement plan design and participant behavior. While...
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Working Paper
Australia had adopted a novel approach to e-cigarette policy by requiring a physician’s prescription to lawfully...
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Working Paper
We quantify the contribution of the largest firms to South Korea's economic performance over the period 1972-2011....
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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
In less than a decade, the United States has gone from being a net importer of liquified natural gas (LNG) to the world’s largest exporter. This change resulted from two developments: the fracking revolution and the construction of a number of LNG export terminals. A decade ago, the US natural gas market was separate from the world market. Because export capacity was limited, rising domestic production due to fracking sharply reduced prices. Today, domestic and global...
Article
Initiatives to mitigate societal challenges have historically been financed primarily with public and philanthropic resources. In Blended Finance (NBER Working Paper 32287), Caroline Flammer, Thomas Giroux, and Geoffrey Heal examine World Bank initiatives to attract private investors to support projects that create societal value but are perceived to have low prospective profitability or high potential risk of failure. They focus on the International Finance...
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):
Affiliates of the International Finance and Macroeconomics (IFM) Program study financial interactions among nations, including cross-border capital flows, exchange rates, responses to global financial crises, and the transmission of economic shocks. Rather than attempting to summarize the more than 1,000 working papers these researchers have distributed since the last program report in 2015, we focus here on three issues that have attracted substantial research attention...
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Author(s):
In the standard labor market model taught in introductory economics classes around the world, relationships between firms and workers are just another transaction, mediated by the impersonal market forces of supply and demand. From this perspective, the labor market is best described as being perfectly competitive, where wages are set by the market, with little room for any employer choice.This “Econ 101” view of the market has a lot of explanatory power. But, as generations...
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
In a new study of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in SSDI Entry and Health (NBER RDRC Center Paper NB23-04), Colleen Carey, Nolan H. Miller, and David Molitor document significant racial and ethnic differences in the use of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Non-Hispanic Blacks and Native Americans enter the SSDI program at the highest rates relative to their share of the population while non-Hispanic Asians enter at the lowest rates. Average...
Article
Native Americans have long experienced poor health outcomes and high mortality rates. Poverty, a critical social determinant of health, is pervasive in tribal communities, contributing to persistent inequities. In an effort to address these challenges, some Native American tribes have turned to casino operations as a means of generating revenue and promoting economic development. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 paved the way for this approach by allowing...
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.
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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
Immigrants play a significant role in the entrepreneurial landscape. In the United States, immigrants are 80 percent more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans. More than half of America's billion-dollar startup companies trace their roots to immigrant founders. There is limited research, however, on the factors that influence immigrants' decisions about where to locate their startup businesses. In The Effect of Immigration Policy on Founding...
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A significant amount of corporate innovation, including in dynamic industries such as software and biotech, is the direct result of university-based research. Consequently, policymakers around the globe have sought to promote the diffusion and successful commercialization of academic research in the private sector. In The Wandering Scholars: Understanding the Heterogeneity of University Commercialization (NBER Working Paper 32069), Josh Lerner, Henry...
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