NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH


Is American Entrepreneurship in Crisis?
An NBER Conference Explores the Issue

Entrepreneurship is an important contributor to productivity growth in the American economy, and there is currently concern that American entrepreneurship is in serious decline. Participants in an NBER conference this autumn, convened with the support of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation explored the measurement of entrepreneurial activity and the factors that affect it. They found that while the number of new firms has declined in recent years, the growth potential of the firms that are started has not; it actually has risen since 2010. Researchers also reported that labor productivity grows more rapidly at young firms than at their more established counterparts, and investigated how a number of public policies, such as state corporate income taxes and minimum wages, affect the rate of start-up activity.

New NBER Research

22 December 2016

Evolution of Health Insurer Costs in Massachusetts, 2010-2012

Individuals entering the Massachusetts health insurance market between 2010 and 2012 had lower health costs than those who left the market during this period, and on average their costs fell in the years after entry, according to research by Kate Ho, Ariel Pakes, and Mark Shepard. The cost growth of individuals who stayed in a plan was significantly higher than average per-member cost growth over this period.
( ...more... )

21 December 2016

Monetary Policy and the Stock Market

Andreas Neuhierl and Michael Weber construct a “slope factor” from market prices of federal funds futures of different horizons, and show that this variable has predictive power for weekly stock returns in the United States. “Slope” also predicts changes in future interest rates and forecast revisions of professional forecasters.
( ...more... )

20 December 2016

Airline Fuel Economy Dynamics

When jet fuel prices are higher, airlines fly fuel inefficient planes slower, scrap older fuel inefficient planes earlier, and substitute miles flown to their more fuel efficient planes, according to research by Matthew E. Kahn and Jerry Nickelsburg.
( ...more... )
More Research

NBER in the News


Who do you invest with for big returns: A rich manager or a poor one?
USA Today
December 21, 2016
 Read the Research

Big pharma won't stop raising prices in 2017 - it'll just do it smarter
Market Watch
December 20, 2016
 Read the Research

The Stagnant Wage Premium
Inside Higher Ed
December 20, 2016
 Read the Research

Why fund managers from poor families achieve better resultsn
PBS Newshour
December 19, 2016
 Read the Research

View all news

New in the NBER Reporter

Economists Increasingly Using Cross-Regional
Variations in Pursuit of Macroeconomic Insights




Cross-region variation provides macroeconomic researchers with richer information on economic fluctuations than aggregate time series data at the national level, writes University of Chicago Professor Erik Hurst, who explains the utility and complications of this approach in the latest edition of The NBER Reporter. Also featured in this issue of the quarterly Reporter are articles by NBER researchers on the dynamics of the U.S. market in higher education, the effects of the business cycle on health behaviors, the development of China’s trade policies, and the impacts of globalization on foreign investment and business structures.

Read or download a pdf of the full edition

Follow us on
Twitter RSS facebook

This Week's Working Papers


Call for Applications

Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program on Disability Policy Research
Funding Opportunity for Determinants of Life Expectancy

Call for Papers

Economic Effects of State Business Taxation
Challenges of Globalization in the Measurement of National Accounts
New Developments in Long-Term Asset Management
Trade and Labor Markets
Understanding Productivity Growth in Agriculture
Trade and Geography Conference

New in the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health

The Effect of Low Levels of Blood
Lead on Children's Test Scores




Reductions in childhood blood lead levels in Rhode Island had positive effects on third grade reading scores, according to a study summarized in the new edition of The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health. This month’s issue also features research examining how long-term care hospitals discharge patients strategically and how raising the early retirement age impacts retirement decisions in Austria.

Read or Download as a PDF

New in the NBER Digest

1776 Was More About Representation than Taxation




The American colonists of 1776 were not being crushed by British taxation; in fact, they were far less heavily taxed than people living in Britain. But their desire for representation, which might have been easily satisfied, was frustrated by a political struggle in London between would-be democratizers and resurgent Royalists, according to a study summarized in the December NBER Digest. Also featured in the current edition of the monthly Digest: research on how workers value their schedules, an analysis of the composition of the alternative workforce, a comparison of results of fund managers from poorer and wealthier families, a report on the impacts of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing programs, and a survey of what venture capitalists look for in a deal.

Download the PDF

Competition in the Promised Land

Black Migrants in Northern
Cities and Labor Markets
A new NBER book by Leah Platt Bouston. From Princeton University Press, 2016 $29.95 (cloth)

From 1940 to 1970, nearly four million black people migrated from the American rural South to settle in the industrial cities of the North and West. Competition in the Promised Land provides a comprehensive account of the long-lasting effects of the influx of black workers on labor markets and urban space in receiving areas.

Traditionally, the Great Black Migration has been lauded as a path to general black economic progress. Leah Boustan challenges this view, arguing instead that the migration produced winners and losers within the black community. Boustan shows that migrants themselves gained tremendously, more than doubling their earnings by moving North. But these new arrivals competed with existing black workers, limiting black-white wage convergence in Northern labor markets and slowing black economic growth. Furthermore, many white households responded to the black migration by relocating to the suburbs. White flight was motivated not only by neighborhood racial change but also by the desire on the part of white residents to avoid participating in the local public services and fiscal obligations of increasingly diverse cities.

Employing historical census data and state-of-the-art econometric methods, Competition in the Promised Land revises our understanding of the Great Black Migration and its role in the transformation of American society.

To order, contact Perseus Distribution, phone 1-800-343-4499; fax 1-800-351-5073, or email orderentry@perseusbooks.com.

Frequently Requested Items

Business Cycle (Recession & Recovery) Page
Latest announcement Relating to the Current Business Cycle (9/20/10)
 






 
  
Publications
Activities
Meetings
NBER Videos
Themes
Data
People
About

National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-868-3900; email: info@nber.org

Contact Us