National Bureau of Economic Research

Conducting and disseminating non-partisan economic research

Coronavirus Pandemic Research

Racial Disparities in COVID-19 Hospital Funding

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020 provided funding to hospitals to support pandemic-related expenses and to make up for lost revenue from non-COVID care that could not be delivered on account of the pandemic.  Funds were allocated to health care facilities based on their prior revenue, their location, the insurance status of the population they typically serve, and their number of COVID-19 hospitalizations.  NBER Researchers Amitabh Chandra of Harvard and Senhil Mullainathan of the University of Chicago, along with Pragya Kakani of Harvard and Ziad Obermeyer of the University of California, Berkeley, studied the allocation of CARES Act funding across hospitals in counties with different racial composition.  Their findings, published in JAMA, suggest that conditional on their level of funding, the COVID-related needs of hospitals in counties with a high share of Black residents were greater than those of hospitals in other counties.  The disparities were greatest for counties with a high level of per capita CARES Act funding.  In the video below, Mullainathan explains their findings and the source of this disparity -- Black patients typically receive less treatment, and therefore generate lower hospital revenues, for a given diagnosis.  An archive of NBER videos on pandemic-related topics may be found here.


Six NBER working papers distributed this week investigate the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic and health consequences, or the impact of public policies designed to respond to the pandemic. One reports that “deaths of despair” among working-age men have risen during the pandemic, contributing to excess mortality (28303). A second draws on past experience to assess the long-term impact of pandemic-related unemployment on life expectancy (28304). A third examines the role of measurement error and survey bias in US unemployment statistics, with particular attention to the unemployment spike following the COVID-19 outbreak (28310). Another analyzes cross-national data and finds that the pandemic-related death toll has been smaller in nations that experienced deep human and economic losses in World War II, perhaps because of societal preparedness to respond to large shocks (28291). A fifth study summarizes the potential role of debt standstills in alleviating sovereign debt burdens that have been heightened by the pandemic (28292). The last study tracks household responses to a universal government grant in Israel in August 2020, finding that many recipients paid off debt or gave the grant to someone who they regarded as in greater need (28312).

More than 340 NBER working papers have addressed various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. These papers are open access and have been collected for easy reference. Like all NBER papers, they are circulated for discussion and comment, and have not been peer-reviewed. View them in reverse chronological order or by topic area.


From the NBER Digest

...a free monthly publication of non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest

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About 20 percent of drug approvals come in pre-holiday surges in December. They are associated with more adverse outcomes than drugs approved at other times. Government approval of drugs surges before major holidays, at month-end, and especially at the end of the year, according to research by Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun, and Danielle Li. In Internal Deadlines, Drug Approvals, and Safety Problems (NBER Working Paper 28071), they find that drugs approved during such...

From the Bulletin on Health

...a free summary of recent NBER Working Papers on health topics, distributed three times a year

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Health care provided by specialists is associated with greater treatment intensity than health care by general practitioners, raising questions about the costs and benefits of the additional care. Researcher Joseph J. Doyle, Jr., in Physician Characteristics and Patient Survival: Evidence from Physician Availability (NBER Working Paper 27458), presents evidence that substantiates the higher costs of care by specialists, and shows that this care by specialists benefits...

From the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability

...a free quarterly summarizing research in the NBER's Retirement and Disability Research Center

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The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides cash benefits and access to Medicaid to 1.3 million low-income children in the US with physical, mental, and behavioral disabilities. Supporters of the program contend that SSI can improve the long-term outcomes of children by boosting household resources of poor families raising a child with a disability. Critics argue that conditioning benefits on a child’s disability creates perverse incentives for families to...

Board Member Cecilia Rouse Nominated to Chair CEA

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President-elect Biden has nominated Cecilia Rouse, a member of the NBER Board of Directors and an NBER research associate from 1992 until 2014, to chair the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Rouse is the dean of Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and the Lawrence and Shirley Katzman and Lewis and Anna Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education. An expert on labor economics and education, Rouse was affiliated with three NBER programs – Children, Economics of Education, and Labor Studies – prior to becoming Princeton’s representative on the Board of Directors. 

Rouse has served in Washington twice before, as a member of the CEA between 2009 and 2011, and as a staff member at the National Economic Council between 1998 and 1999. She received both her AB and her PhD in economics from Harvard University. She has spent her entire academic career at Princeton.

If confirmed, Rouse will be the 15th current or former NBER research associate to serve as CEA chair since Arthur Burns was tapped for this role by President Eisenhower in 1953.


New Working Group on Race and Stratification in the Economy Launched

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The NBER has launched a Working Group on Race and Stratification in the Economy to explore, document, and disseminate research on the causes and consequences of racial disparities in economic outcomes, and to stimulate research on race in all aspects of economic analysis. Research Associate Trevon Logan, the Hazel C.Youngberg Distinguished Professor of Economics at The Ohio State University, will serve as the inaugural director. The group will meet twice each year, beginning with a virtual meeting in April 2021.

The working group will take a broad approach to the economics of race, considering the factors that contribute to racial differences in income, wealth, housing, educational attainment, labor market outcomes, economic mobility, and a range of other measures. It will explore economic models of discrimination and social stratification, as well as insights on these issues from other social sciences, and will consider the role of public policies and political institutions in contributing to, and ameliorating, racial differences. More broadly, it will encourage new approaches to economic analysis of race in a variety of settings.


From the NBER Reporter

...a free quarterly featuring affiliates writing about their research, program updates, and NBER news

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Safe assets are integral to the functioning of banks, financial markets, and the international financial system. Financial market participants use safe assets to meet liquidity and transaction needs, as high-quality collateral for loans and derivative contracts, and as default-free stores of value. These services imply a nonpecuniary return on safe assets, a convenience yield, that drives up the prices of safe assets and lowers their expected return in equilibrium. The...

Featured Working Papers

The Electoral College is about 40 times as likely as a national popular vote to generate scenarios in which a small number of ballots in a pivotal voting unit determines who wins the presidency, research by Michael Geruso and Dean Spears shows.

Exposure to higher levels of air pollution increases influenza hospitalizations, but highly-effective influenza vaccines neutralize this relationship, according to a study by Joshua S. Graff Zivin, Matthew J. Neidell, Nicholas J. Sanders, and Gregor Singer.

Germán Gutiérrez and Thomas Philippon report that the contribution of dominant firms to aggregate productivity growth, both in the US globally, has fallen by more than one third since 2000.

The sharp drop in core US inflation in the early 1980s was mostly due to shifting expectations about long-run monetary policy, and the greater stability of inflation since the 1990s is mostly due to long-run inflationary expectations becoming more firmly anchored, according to Jonathon Hazell, Juan Herreño, Emi Nakamura, and Jón Steinsson.

After the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 reduced Medicare reimbursements for hospitals, research activity increased by 10 percent in the average teaching hospital and 20 percent among major teaching hospitals,  Pierre Azoulay, Misty L. Heggeness, and Jennifer L. Kao report. 

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In the News

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Books & Chapters

Through a partnership with the University of Chicago Press, the NBER publishes the proceedings of four annual conferences as well as other research studies associated with NBER-based research projects.

Interviews

NBER researchers discuss their work on subjects of wide interest to economists, policymakers, and the general public. Recordings of more-detailed presentations, keynote addresses, and panel discussions at NBER conferences are available on the Lectures page.
Interview
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020 provided funding to hospitals to support...
Interview
The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the focus of job-seekers toward larger and more resilient companies. NBER researchers...
Interview
More than 5 million firms participated in the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), which extended potentially...
Interview
More than 5 million firms participated in the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), which extended potentially...
Interview
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 240,000 deaths in the United States, a sharp decline in economic activity,...
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