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The Digest

Firm Responses to the EU’s Data Privacy Requirements
Article
Data analytics have become a key element of the production of goods and services in industries ranging from manufacturing to finance. New data privacy laws can affect the cost of acquiring, storing, and analyzing data, and ultimately raise production costs for firms. In Data, Privacy Laws and Firm Production: Evidence from the GDPR (NBER Working Paper 32146), Mert Demirer, Diego J. Jiménez Hernández, Dean Li, and Sida Peng study how the European General...

Workers Auto-enrolled in Pensions Save, but also Borrow, More
Article
Many countries require employers to enroll their workers in retirement savings plans that deposit a regular percentage of their paycheck in a retirement account unless the worker opts out. These automatic enrollment programs are meant to address concerns that the employees, left to their own devices, might save too little for retirement. Previous research has documented that automatic enrollment in a savings plan significantly increases participation and contribution rates....

The Reporter

Program Report: International Finance and Macroeconomics
Article
Author(s): Mark A. Aguiar & Linda Tesar
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...

Monopsony Power in Labor Markets
Article
Author(s): Suresh Naidu & Arindrajit Dube
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 25th Annual Meeting of the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium
Article
The Social Security Administration (SSA) convened its 2023 Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC) Meeting virtually on August 3–4. The meeting featured research funded through the NBER RDRC as well as through other RDRC centers based at Boston College, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin. Kilolo Kijakazi, Acting Commissioner of the SSA, provided welcoming remarks. She began by remembering Dr. William Spriggs, chair of the Department...

Inter-state Variation in Disability Applications during the Pandemic
Article
  The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated health and economic burdens have unfolded quite differently across states in the US. These differences are due to a variety of factors, including population density, socioeconomic status, health, and state policies. Variation across states in the timing and magnitude of the pandemic as well as in state characteristics and policies may have affected the dynamics of federal disability applications during this period. In...

The Bulletin on Health

How Informative Are Risk-Adjusted Hospital Quality Measures?
Article
Hospital quality indicators are intended to provide public information about differences in the quality of care across hospitals. The measures — such as 30-day mortality rates and 30-day hospitalization costs for admitted patients — are adjusted for the characteristics of each hospital’s patient population. In principle, these risk-adjusted indicators are not affected if a hospital treats especially unhealthy patients. If the risk adjustment is inadequate, however, the...

C-section Rates and Birth Outcomes
Article
Cesarean section (C-section) is the most common surgical procedure performed in the United States. Sarah Robinson, Heather Royer, and David Silver report that C-section rates for first-time, singleton births increased from 24 percent to 32 percent between 1989 and 2017 alongside significant changes in medical practices during this period. In 2001, for example, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists began recommending C-sections for breech...

The Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurs’ Choice of Startup Location
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...

Explaining Geographic Disparities in the Commercialization of Academic Research
Article
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...