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The Digest

China’s Rise in Global Research
Article
 Although Western nations have dominated global scientific research since the nineteenth century, recent decades have witnessed profound shifts in where research is conducted, what topics it addresses, and how widely its findings spread across borders. In The Geography of Science (NBER Working Paper 34694), Abhishek Nagaraj and Randol Yao provide a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of global science between 1980 and 2022. Using data on 44 million...

US Treasury Bonds and Trade Policy Uncertainty
Article
 In April 2025, the United States implemented its highest tariffs in a century, triggering reciprocal tariff announcements from China, Canada, and the European Union. In the days following the tariff announcements, the S&P 500 fell more than 11 percent. The yield on 30-year Treasury bonds rose and peaked at 5.2 percent in late May, its highest level since before the 2007–08 global financial crisis. In Tariff War Shock and the Convenience Yield of US Treasuries—...

The Reporter

Program Report: Industrial Organization
Article
Author(s): Liran Einav
Researchers in the Industrial Organization (IO) program study consumer and firm behavior, competition, innovation, and government regulation. This report begins with a brief summary of general developments in the last four decades in the range and focus of program members’ research, then discusses specific examples of recent work.When the program was launched in the early 1990s, two developments had profoundly shaped IO research. One was the development of game-theoretic...

The Risks and Rewards of Homeownership
Article
Author(s): Patrick Bayer, Fernando V. Ferreira & Stephen Ross
The US government has long promoted homeownership through subsidies and tax incentives, viewing it as both socially beneficial and a primary pathway to individual wealth accumulation. For the middle class—those in roughly the middle three-fifths of the wealth distribution—housing wealth remains the most important source of financial security and net worth. Homeownership is also widely believed to provide access to better neighborhoods and higher-quality schools. Yet despite...

The Bulletin on Health

Immunotherapy Increases the Cost of Cancer Care but Reduces Mortality
Article
 Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are immunotherapy drugs that mobilize the patient’s immune system to detect and attack cancer cells. They are considered a breakthrough development in cancer care, but are very expensive, with a full course of treatment costing more than $150,000 per patient. In The Impact of Immunotherapy on Reductions in Cancer Mortality: Evidence from Medicare (NBER Working Paper 34317), Danea Horn, Abby E. Alpert, Mark Duggan, and Mireille...

Nursing Home Roommate Assignments, Cognitive Health, and Mortality
Article
 In 2025, nearly 1.2 million Americans lived in nursing homes. Medicaid and Medicare expenditures of $91 billion represented two-thirds of total revenues for nursing care facilities. With the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer's disease-related dementias (AD/ADRD) projected to rise as the US population ages, the need for nursing home care is expected to increase. Nearly 80 percent of nursing home patients are assigned shared rooms, which raises the question...

The Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

Capital Gains Taxation and Startup Founders
Article
 The US capital gains tax is realization based, which means that taxes are due when appreciated assets are sold. Critics of this approach argue that it allows asset holders, such as corporate founders, to defer their tax obligations, sometimes indefinitely. An alternative approach, taxing gains on accrual, would require asset holders to value their assets periodically and to pay tax on the gain since the last valuation. Critics of this approach argue that it could force...

The Geographic Expansion of Innovative Firms
Article
 Most US innovation stems from firms that operate R&D facilities in many local markets. IBM and Google are two prominent examples, with R&D activities—measured by patenting—in approximately 70 and 20 distinct locations, respectively. When a technology company opens an R&D facility in a new location, it may generate knowledge spillovers that benefit nearby firms and inventors. In The Geography of Innovative Firms (NBER Working Paper 34010), Craig A. Chikis,...