AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 1, March 2017
The Reporter
A free quarterly publication featuring program updates, several summaries of affiliates' research, and news about the NBER
Author(s):
Narrowly interpreted, corporate finance is the study of the investment and financing policies of corporations. Because corporations are at the center of economic activity, the causes and consequences of corporate finance — and hence the research activities of the program — touch almost every aspect of micro- and macroeconomics, allowing the center of gravity to shift from the narrow concerns of corporate managers.
The NBER Program on Corporate Finance recently completed...
Article
Author(s):
Research in the economics of education has devoted much attention to the role of external factors, such as teacher quality, class size, curriculum, peers, financial constraints, and parental investments in determining students' development. Students' own role in their development has received comparatively less attention. This is perhaps due to the assumption from the traditional human capital model that students always do the best they can when making decisions about how...
Article
Author(s):
All societies have an interest in finding the appropriate incentives and institutions to promote enterprise, knowledge, and innovation. My empirical research in law and economic history sheds light on these sources of long-term development in Europe and the United States during early industrialization, 1750–1930. This was a period of enormous policy variation, which allows us to better identify the nature and consequences of specific measures.
Patents and Inventive...
Article
Author(s):
More than 120 million Americans currently receive their health insurance through the Medicare or Medicaid programs. Total government spending on the two programs in 2016 is projected to exceed $1.2 trillion. 1
Medicare is a federal program that covers approximately 48 million Americans aged 65 or older, as well as nine million younger adults receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits. Medicaid is a means-tested program that, in 2016, provided coverage...
Article
Author(s):
The main focus of my research for nearly two decades has been macroeconomic policy during periods when the central bank has cut the short-term nominal interest rate to zero, periods that are often referred to as exhibiting a liquidity trap. In this summary, I describe my key conclusions.
The work can be divided quite neatly into four parts, roughly following the time line in which it was written. I highlight each phase of my research agenda and three generations of models...
News
Article
John Abowd received the Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics. The award, presented by the Washington Statistical Society, the National Association for Business Economics, and the American Statistical Association, recognizes original and important contributions to the development of economic statistics.
Kenneth Ahern won second place in the Jensen Prize competition for the Best Paper in the Journal of Financial Economics....
Books
Article
Edited by
Shane Greenstein
Josh Lerner,
and Scott Stern
The University of Chicago Press, 2017
$60 (cloth)
The 17th volume of Innovation Policy and the Economy provides an accessible forum for bringing the work of leading academic researchers to an audience of policy makers and those interested in the interaction between public policy and innovation. In the first chapter, Joel Waldfogel discusses how reduced costs of production have resulted in a "Golden...
Meetings & Conferences, Winter 2017
Meetings
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ArticleIndustrial Organization The NBER's Program on Industrial Organization met at Stanford on January 27–28. Research Associate Matthew Gentzkow of Stanford University and Faculty Research Fellow Robin S. Lee of Harvard University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed: Ali Hortaçsu, University of Chicago and NBER; Fernando Luco and Dongni Zhu, Texas A&M University; and Steven L. Puller, Texas A&M University...
Conferences
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Article18th Annual Neemrana Conference The NBER, India's National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), and the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) sponsored a meeting in Neemrana, India, on December 16–18, 2016, that included NBER researchers and economists from Indian universities, research institutions, and government departments. NBER participants were David Atkin, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and ...