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The manuscripts below have been recommended for publication by the NBER.
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Below are summaries of the books.
Helena Fitz-Patrick
NBER
1) Human Capital in History: The American Record
Edited by Leah P. Boustan, Carola Frydman, and Robert A. Margo.
http://papers.nber.org/books/bous12-1
This edited volume is a collection of ten papers presented at the
NBER-Spencer conference with a slightly different title (Human Capital
and History: The American Record) in December of 2012. All chapters
have been significantly revised in light of formal discussant comments
and very lively discussion at the conference. The volume honors the many
important contributions that Claudia Goldin has made to scholarship and
teaching in economic history and labor economics. Consistent with this
goal, the ten chapters address a core set of closely integrated issues:
the role of human capital in the long-term development of the American
economy, trends in fertility and marriage, and womens participation in
economic change. Specific topics include change over time in the
relative demand for skilled labor and its relationship to technical
progress; factors affecting the growth in the supply of high school
graduates since World War Two; human capital investment in immigrant
families, past and present; long-term changes in complementarities
between investment in schooling and health; cross-country differences in
the relationship between female labor force participation and economic
development; the evolution of racial differences in female labor force
participation from the end of the Civil War to the present; changes in
the relative costs and benefits of cohabitation versus marriage and
their relationship to childbearing over the second half of the twentieth
century; differences in the nature of fertility decline in the early
versus the late twentieth century and their implications for economic
and social development; and changes in beliefs about womens role in the
economy and their impact on female labor force participation,
occupational choice, and investment in human capital. The volume also
features a brief appreciation of Goldins scholarly and educational
career. The authors are leading researchers in economic history, labor
economics, the economics of education, and related fields, and the
papers present new findings that significantly challenge traditional
views on the topics under analysis. The market for the book consists of
advanced undergraduate and graduate students in economics; and
professional economists, primarily in the fields of economic history,
labor economics, education, and development.
2) Discoveries in the Economics of Aging
Edited by David A. Wise
http://papers.nber.org/books/wise13-1
The long-anticipated aging of the baby boom generation across the
threshold of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare has arrived.
The implications of these demographic trends are extensive and
significant, yet they are just one part of the rapidly changing
landscape of aging in the United States and around the world. Research
in the economics of aging seeks to understand the health and financial
wellbeing of people as they age, and how wellbeing is affected by this
changing landscape. This is the fifteenth in a series of NBER volumes
synthesizing analyses of economics of aging research, drawn from a
research program spanning 25 years. A substantive focus of the research
reported in this volume is health, and its relationship to financial
wellbeing.
Part I of the volume focuses on health trends and health measurement. It
includes studies on the compression of morbidity near the end of life,
the lifetime risk of nursing home use, and the use of alternative
indices for measuring health. Part II analyzes relationships between
health and financial circumstances. It includes studies of how Social
Security, health and financial assets relate in the latter years of
life; and how the causal relationship between health and finances may
begin from childhood. Part III considers other determinants of health,
including retirement, marriage, living with grandchildren, and life
expectations. Part IV explores the potential for innovations,
interventions and public policy to improve health and financial
wellbeing. It includes studies of an experimental intervention to reduce
anemia, the dissemination of medical advances, and how the availability
of a Roth 401(k) option has affected saving.
3) Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 14
Edited by Josh Lerner and Scott Stern
http://papers.nber.org/books/lern13-1
This volume is the fourteenth annual volume of the NBER Innovation
Policy and the Economy (IPE) group. The appreciation of the importance
of innovation to the economy has increased over the past decade. There
is an active debate regarding the implications of technological change
for economic policy and the appropriate policies and programs regarding
research, innovation, and the commercialization of new technology. This
debate has only intensified as policymakers focus on new sources of
innovation and growth in light of the continuing economic downturn and
the associated focus on enhancing employment and growth.
Four of five of the papers in this years volume highlight the
increasing role of the Internet and digitization in our understanding of
the changing nature of innovation and entrepreneurship, and the impact
of innovation policy. In the first, the authors offer an overview of the
impact of Big Data large-scale administrative and private sector
datasets on the ability to conduct novel types of measurement and
research in economics and related fields. The second paper focuses on
the impact of the Internet on both the nature and extent of piracy in
creative media industries. The next paper offers a more exploratory
analysis of the rapidly emerging area of crowdfunding. The fourth paper
addresses the underpinnings of much of the digital economy by focusing
on the institutional logic of standard-setting organizations. The last
paper for this years volume focuses on the interplay between geographic
clusters, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
Received on Thu Sep 12 2013 - 15:06:58 EDT
