National Bureau of Economic Research

Younger entrepreneurs are disadvantaged in small business loan markets because lenders rely heavily on personal credit scores, which favor long histories of repaying debt. In Modernizing Access to Credit for Younger Entrepreneurs: From FICO to Cash Flow (NBER Working Paper 33367), researchers Christopher M. Hair, Sabrina T. Howell, Mark J. Johnson, and Siena Matsumoto document this fact and show that younger entrepreneurs benefit from underwriting that augments personal credit scores (like FICO) with cash flow data. They analyze comprehensive…

The expulsion of Japanese Americans from western states during World War II upended nearly 120,000 lives, including those of nearly 22,000 agricultural workers, and set back farming in affected regions for several decades. Citing security concerns in the wake of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the US government in spring 1942 declared that all individuals of Japanese ancestry, regardless of citizenship status, were subject to mandatory removal from all of California and parts of Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. Most were eventually resettled in internment camps. At the end of the war, fewer than half of the internees returned to their original states, and fewer still reclaimed their farms or returned to agriculture.

In How the 1942 Japanese Exclusion Impacted US Agriculture (NBER Working Paper 33971), Peter Zhixian Lin and Giovanni Peri show that Japanese Americans...

Intellectual property (IP) rights and counterfeiting have permeated everyday lives as globalization, technological advancement, and AI flourish. Interbrand estimates that the brand value of Louis Vuitton was $26.3 billion in 2023, as an example of the IP value of brands. The values brands possess generate incentives for counterfeiting and imitation. Counterfeiting cuts across countries and industries. Notably, counterfeit footwear has topped the seizure list of the US customs service for four years, accounting for nearly 40 percent of total seizures.¹ The origins, impacts, and remedies of counterfeits and the protection of IP are pertinent topics to ...

The US Surgeon General has called the child mental health crisis “the defining public health crisis of our time.” In 2020, 13 percent of US children aged 3 to 17 had a diagnosed mental or behavioral condition. In 2021, mental health services for children cost $31 billion—47 percent of pediatric medical spending. Childhood mental health issues are linked to lower educational attainment, reduced employment, and increased use of welfare programs. Also, youth suicide rates are especially high in the US; males aged 15 to 19 have a rate four times higher than in France. In Investing in Children to Address the Child Mental Health Crisis (NBER Working Paper 33632), Janet Currie explores three common misconceptions about this youth mental health...