With tension ratcheting up in U.S.-China trade relations The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and many other national media outlets are full of reports on the trade war between the world’s biggest economies. The impacts of the conflict have been extensively researched by NBER affiliates in studies such as:

• The Return to Protectionism
• The Impact of the 2018 Trade War on U.S. Prices and Welfare
• The Production Relocation and Price Effects of U.S. Trade Policy: The Case of Washing Machines.

A non-technical summary of trade war impact studies appears in the current edition of the NBER’s free monthly Digest.

Surveys of expectations were an important research tool in the 1950s and ‘60s, but faded with the rise of rational expectations theory. More recently, rational expectations models in both macroeconomics and finance have reached dead ends and researchers are finding that actual behavior of survey respondents is predicted more successfully by their survey responses than by rational expectations models. People literally put their money where their mouths are — not where it ought to be in rational expectations models. A full report is in the current edition of the NBER Reporter. Also featured in this edition of the free quarterly Reporter are articles on patents and innovation, charitable-giving behaviors, the NBER Education program, and financial misconduct.