National Bureau of Economic Research
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Workplace Adoption of Generative AI
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Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has recently emerged as a potentially transformative workplace technology. The ultimate impact of generative AI on the economy will depend on how many workers adopt the technology, how intensively they use it, and for which tasks. In The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI (NBER Working Paper 32966), researchers Alexander Bick, Adam Blandin, and David J. Deming report on a nationally representative US survey of generative AI adoption at work ...
From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries
Influencing Retirement Savings Decisions with Automatic Enrollment and Related Tools
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Historically, retirees in the US relied on the “three-legged stool” of Social Security, defined benefit (DB) pension plans, and personal savings to provide retirement income. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, access to DB plans began to fall while access to defined contribution (DC) plans, which require individuals to make their own savings plan contributions and investment decisions during their working years, rose. As of December 2023, retirement assets in DC plans — e.g., 401(k)s — and individual retirement accounts (IRAs) totaled $24.1 trillion, with 56 percent of those assets held in IRAs. Nearly two-thirds of IRAs contained funds rolled over from 401(k)s or other employer-sponsored retirement plans. By comparison, DB plans held $11.8…
From the NBER Bulletin on Health
How Health Disparities Develop over the Lifecycle
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In the Netherlands, there are striking socioeconomic differences in mortality among older adults, with a 4.4 percentage point (67 percent) higher five-year mortality rate for 70-year-old individuals with below-median income than for those with above-median income. To better understand the role of chronic disease in these health disparities, Kaveh Danesh, Jonathan T. Kolstad, William D. Parker, and Johannes Spinnewijn develop an index of chronic disease burden in The Chronic Disease Index: Analyzing Health Inequalities over the Lifecycle (NBER Working Paper 32577). This index is a measure...
From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability
Inflation’s Impact on Social Security Disability Program Beneficiaries
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Social Security Disability (SSD) program beneficiaries, like other consumers, have been negatively affected by inflation over the past several years. In a survey from June of 2023, more than half (59 percent) of SSD program beneficiaries reported higher prices for the disability-related goods and services they need to purchase, and more than one-quarter reported reducing food spending to cover disability-related costs, Zachary Morris and Stephanie Rennane found in Examining the Impact of Inflation on the Economic Security of Disability Program Beneficiaries (NBER RDRC Paper NB23-08).
Using new survey data, the researchers found that 82 percent of beneficiaries reported out-of-pocket expenses related to their disability, with average annual spending of $4,412 and median spending...
From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship
“Third Places” Boost Local Economic Activity
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Sociologists have argued that “third places” like cafés, which provide opportunities for individuals to socialize and exchange ideas outside of home and work, improve neighborhood life. But what about the relationship between such places and economic activity? In Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés (NBER Working Paper 32604), researchers Jinkyong Choi, Jorge Guzman, and Mario L. Small use data on US business registrations between 1990 and 2022 from the Startup Cartography Project to examine whether the opening of a Starbucks in a neighborhood with no previous cafés affects local entrepreneurship...
Featured Working Papers
Using UK offshore oil exploration data, Charles Hodgson finds that removing free-riding incentives and strengthening property rights over exploration-well data would increase the rate of exploration.
Exogenous increases in remittances accessible to the Tamil Tigers significantly increased their fighting strength in the Sri Lankan Civil War and may have prolonged the war, a study by Barthélémy Bonadio, Andrei A. Levchenko, Dominic Rohner, and Mathias Thoenig finds.
Using 1900 and 1910 census data, Grant Miller, Jack Shane, and C. Matthew Snipp find that the assimilation and land allotment policies of the Dawes Act of 1887 increased American Indian child and adult mortality and shortened life expectancy by at least 20 percent.
Leading up to the pandemic and in 2020, income and consumption poverty patterns were very similar. As a result of expanded unemployment insurance and stimulus payments, in 2021consumption poverty fell less than income poverty, while income poverty rose sharply in 2022 as consumption poverty continued to decline, according to Bruce D. Meyer, Jeehoon Han, and James X. Sullivan.
The music platform Spotify’s use of expanded playlists increased discovery and promotion of independent-label songs and boosted independents’ share of the new music being promoted from 38 percent in late 2017 to 55 percent in early 2020, Luis Aguiar, Joel Waldfogel, and Axel Zeijen find.
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