National Bureau of Economic Research
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Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson Awarded 2024 Nobel Prize
news article
Research associates Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity." The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained that the three scholars "contributed innovative research about what affects countries' economic prosperity." Their work highlights the critical role of political and economic institutions in affecting the evolution of living standards. It not only offers…
A research summary from the monthly NBER Digest
Returns to Port Infrastructure Investments
article
Ships carry nearly 80 percent of internationally traded goods, which makes port infrastructure essential to a well-functioning trading system. In Investment in Infrastructure and Trade: The Case of Ports (NBER Working Paper 32503), Giulia Brancaccio, Myrto Kalouptsidi, and Theodore Papageorgiou examine the returns to investments in port infrastructure.
The researchers analyze data on the universe of port calls between 2016 and 2021 by bulk carriers with a deadweight of more than 10,000 tons. They find that the average port call lasts 117 hours, one-third of which is waiting time...
From the NBER Bulletin on Health
Effects of Insurance Coverage on Infertility Treatments, Childbearing, and Wellbeing
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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 consequences of infertility and the role of insurance coverage in household decisions to initiate treatment. Using administrative, population-wide data for the period 2006–2019, the researchers estimate the use of infertility treatment. They find that over the course of their fertile years...
From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability
Disability Insurance Benefits and Household Composition
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Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) “family maximum” rules cap the benefits that can be paid to a disabled worker’s family at the lower of 85 percent of the worker’s average indexed monthly earnings and 150 percent of their primary insurance amount. The effect of these rules is that family payments are the same whether a DI beneficiary has one or many dependents, and when DI beneficiaries have low benefit determinations, there are no payments for dependents at all.
In Understanding the Disparate Impacts of the Social Security Disability Insurance Family Maximum Rules (NBER RDRC Paper NB23-07), Timothy J. Moore examines how the economic wellbeing of DI beneficiary...
From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries
Organizational Approaches to Increased Worker Wellbeing and Productivity
article
Negotiations between workers and firm management are a defining feature of labor markets around the world. By many measures, labor relations have deteriorated substantially in recent years, often leading to strikes. In the United States, there were nearly 350 labor actions last year, the most in two decades, followed by 124 in the early months of 2024. Most of these actions are related to differences over worker compensation, benefits, and amenities.
Organizational economics is premised on the notion that firms are not monoliths but rather groups of individuals attempting to coordinate actions towards a set of common goals. Firm performance, then, depends critically on the preferences, incentives, and constraints of individuals, and the nature of their interaction within the organization. Understanding these many factors can…
From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship
Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurs’ Choice of Startup Location
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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 Location Choice: Evidence from Canada's Start-up Visa Program (NBER Working Paper 31634), Saerom Lee and Britta Glennon investigate the impact of Canada's Start-up Visa Program on US-based…
Featured Working Papers
Data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System for the period 2004–21 show that an 8 percent increase in adult access to mental health and substance use treatment reduces child maltreatment reports by 1 percent, Mir M. Ali, Thanh Lu, Johanna Catherine Maclean, and Angélica Meinhofer find.
Contrary to the belief that seniors "age in place", Salla Kalin, Antoine B. Levy, and Mathilde Muñoz find that Portugal’s 2013 grant of full tax exemption for foreign-source pensioners induced substantial migration among wealthy and educated pensioners living in higher-tax countries in Europe.
The stock market reaction to surprise monetary policy announcements by the Federal Open Market Committee is largely due to changes in the default-free term structure of yields, not changes in the equity premium, Stefan Nagel and Zhengyang Xu show.
California’s highest-in-nation Earned Income Tax Credit supplement does not affect employment of low-skill single mothers due to unique aspects of its structure and to the state’s high minimum wage, according to a study by David Neumark and Zeyu Li.
During the Industrial Revolution, Britain sustained faster technological change and economic growth than comparable European countries, such as France, because British inventors worked on technologies that were more central in the innovation network, Lukas Rosenberger, W. Walker Hanlon, and Carl Hallmann find.
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