For the 12th year, leading researchers and graduate students interested in entrepreneurship met for an intensive week of study at NBER headquarters in Cambridge, MA, sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

The summer issue of the Bulletin on Health features a study of the effects of heating costs on deaths from health conditions that are worsened by cold weather. Researchers find that households reduce their home energy use when prices increase, but not so much as to fully offset the price increase, so they are still exposed to higher energy bills. They demonstrate that higher heating prices also increase mortality rates, especially for cardiovascular and respiratory causes of death, and in lower-income counties. Their estimates imply that the lowered price of heating due to shale natural gas production and other factors in the late 2000s averted 11,000 winter deaths per year in areas that relied on this heating energy source. Also featured in the summer issue of the Bulletin on Health are studies of the effects of California’s change in vaccine laws on vaccination and medical exemption rates, and the distributional impact of penicillin’s introduction on mortality in Italy following World War II.