National Bureau of Economic Research

Entrepreneurship training is generally intended to improve founders’ chances of success. It may also create value by helping entrepreneurs recognize when a venture no longer warrants further investment of time and resources. If so, effective training could cause some startups to shut down sooner even as it improves outcomes for others. 

In Learning to Quit? A Multi-Year, Multi-Site Field Experiment with Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurs (NBER Working Paper 34755), Esther Bailey, Daniel Fehder, Eric Floyd, Yael Hochberg, and Daniel J. Lee study this possibility through a randomized experiment ...

I am deeply honored to be here with you today to deliver the 2026 Martin Feldstein lecture. I first met Marty more than 30 years ago in the Fall of 1995 as a graduate student in his Public Economics course. I learned so much from him during that course about Social Security and many other topics including individual and corporate income taxation, unemployment insurance, and public goods. I also was fortunate during the next three years of my graduate studies to serve as a Teaching Fellow in both his Principles of Economics and American Economic Policy courses and to have him as one of my advisors on my PhD research. He was a phenomenal teacher and advisor who cared deeply about all of his students. This dedication extended to the entire academic economics profession as evidenced by his inspiring leadership for many years of the NBER…

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, salaried employees are guaranteed overtime pay if their base salary falls below a legally defined “overtime exemption threshold.” Workers earning above this threshold can be classified as exempt from overtime protections. Because this federal threshold has not kept pace with inflation, the share of salaried workers automatically covered for overtime fell from over 50 percent in 1975 to less than 10 percent by 2016. In response, a number of states have raised their own overtime exemption thresholds above the federal level.

In The Labor Market Effects of Expanding Overtime Coverage (NBER Working Paper 35433), Simon Quach studies 19 state-level overtime exemption threshold increases...

Nearly one in ten older Americans lives with dementia, a condition that gradually erodes memory and the cognitive skills needed for complex decision-making. Even though Medicare coverage is nearly universal among this age group, traditional Medicare alone leaves significant gaps as it does not cover dental, vision, or hearing care, and it carries substantial cost-sharing. To fill these gaps, beneficiaries must actively choose among several insurance options—enrolling in Medicare Advantage, adding private supplemental insurance to traditional Medicare, or, for those with sufficiently low income and assets, applying for Medicaid. Beneficiaries may make changes during open enrollment each year and must re-enroll in private supplemental coverage or Medicare Advantage if their plan is no longer offered or they fail to pay premiums…

Nursing homes certified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to provide care and receive public reimbursement through Medicare and Medicaid are subject to mandatory annual inspections. While inspections are unannounced, they typically occur on an approximately yearly basis, as 74 percent of inspections take place between 40 and 60 weeks after the previous one. The average gap is around 53 weeks. Due to the cyclical nature of inspections, nursing home operators are able to anticipate when an inspection is likely and adjust their behavior accordingly. They appear to devote more effort to patient care when inspections are approaching.

In Predictably Unpredictable Inspections (NBER Working Paper 34491), Ashvin Gandhi, Andrew Olenski, and Maggie Shi study how the predictability of nursing home inspections shapes facility effort and patient...