AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 6, June 2018
The Digest
A free monthly publication featuring non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest
After suffering a breach of customers' personal data, the average attacked firm loses 1.1 percent of its market value and experiences a 3.2 percentage point drop in its year-on-year sales growth rate.
In late 2017, a cyberattack exposed personal information on nearly 70 million customers of Target Corp., the Minnesota-based discount retailer. Customers worried about the potential cost of stolen phone numbers and credit card information. The combination of reduced...
Article
Relatively small commercial and industrial loans have fallen by 9 percent at large banks and by even more at smaller banks since 2010, when the legislation was enacted.
The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and was designed to safeguard the banking system, appears to have made it more difficult for small businesses and entrepreneurs to obtain funding.
In The Impact of the Dodd-...
Article
Data gathered online can be used quickly and transparently to compute PPP measures, but the results may be less accurate in countries that are more rural and have fewer large retailers.
Prices of similar products in different countries are used to calculate purchasing power parity (PPP), a measure of the relative cost of living in various nations. PPP estimates are used to compare the standards of living across countries, and are sometimes used as a basis for...
Article
Women tend to marry men who are older and to retire at the same time as their husbands. This pattern contributes to a substantial gender gap in Social Security wealth.
Health status, expected Social Security benefits, and the leisure associated with reduced work are among the considerations that affect the retirement decisions of married couples. Because women live longer, on average, than men, and often have interrupted careers as a result of childbearing, one...
Article
Childhood exposure to Mexico's Progresa program raised average educational attainment by 1.4 years. Girls were 30 percentage points, and boys 18 percentage points, more likely to obtain some secondary schooling.
More than 80 countries around the world currently administer conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs that provide low-income families with money in exchange for their engaging in certain behaviors. Studies of these programs have often found positive short...
Article
Individuals who received personalized counseling after filing for unemployment benefits had higher subsequent total income and tax liability.
In late 2009, the state of Nevada provided individualized job-search assistance to randomly selected recipients of unemployment insurance (UI). Of the 32,751 people receiving UI benefits during this period, 4,673 were offered assistance. Those chosen to receive individual assistance were sent letters asking them to attend...