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The Digest

Energy Access and Industrial Specialization
Article
 How does access to energy resources shape regional industrial development? In Local Energy Access and Industry Specialization: Evidence from World War II Emergency Pipelines (NBER Working Paper 33721), Jacob Greenspon and Gordon H. Hanson examine this question by studying how emergency pipelines built during World War II influenced regional manufacturing specialization across American counties after the war. They analyze the impact of pipelines...

The Changing Distribution of the Return to Higher Education
Article
Higher education has played a central role in reducing income inequality and the intergenerational persistence of socioeconomic status in the US during the twentieth century. However, the average return to attending college for students from families in different strata of the income distribution is not the same and has diverged in recent decades. Students from higher-income families receive greater wage benefits from college attendance than their lower-income peers. In...

The Reporter

Program Report: Development of the American Economy
Article
Author(s): Leah Platt Boustan & William J. Collins
The Development of the American Economy (DAE) program was one of the first research programs launched by Martin Feldstein in 1978 when he formalized the modern structure of the NBER.The mission of the program is to research historical aspects of the American economy. Its members are economic historians whose specific interests span many subfields within economics, including macroeconomics, labor economics, finance, political economy, trade, and industrial organization....

Collusion in Public Procurement
Article
Author(s): Sylvain Chassang & Kei Kawai
In both developed and developing countries, annual spending on public procurement averages about 12 percent of national GDP. The efficiency of public procurement can have a long-run impact on the growth and productivity of countries. A major challenge in achieving efficiency, however, is the possibility of collusion among suppliers. Collusive agreements increase prices, leading to wasted tax dollars or, in the case of developing countries, wasted foreign aid. These...

The Bulletin on Health

Health Status and Work Capacity Remain High at Older Ages, Especially for Educated Adults
Article
Proposed increases in the eligibility age for retirement benefits raise questions about the health status of older adults and their ability to continue working beyond current retirement ages. In Trends in Work Capacity in the US Population: Are Recent Cohorts in Worse Health? (NBER Working Paper 33733), David M. Cutler, Ellen Meara, and Susan Stewart describe the age profile of health status for older adults in the US, how it has changed across cohorts, and how it differs...

Medicaid’s Lifesaving Effects on Low-Income Adults
Article
Lower-income adults in the US are more likely to lack health insurance and to suffer worse health, a correlation that raises the long-standing question of whether health insurance affects health. In Saved by Medicaid: New Evidence on Health Insurance and Mortality from the Universe of Low-Income Adults (NBER Working Paper 33719), Angela Wyse and Bruce D. Meyer present new evidence on this question by evaluating the consequences of recent Medicaid expansions. The largest...

The Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship as an Alternative to Flexibility at Work
Article
The surge in remote work in recent years has transformed labor markets, with potentially important implications for the interaction between workplace flexibility and entrepreneurship. In Hustling from Home? Work from Home Flexibility and Entrepreneurial Entry (NBER Working Paper 33237), John M. Barrios, Yael Hochberg, and Hanyi (Livia) Yi explore whether the increased flexibility provided by work-from-home (WFH) arrangements has affected entrepreneurial decisions....

The Earnings of Self-Employed Workers
Article
Self-employed workers have significantly higher average incomes and steeper, more persistent income growth profiles than their paid-employed counterparts, according to On the Nature of Entrepreneurship (NBER Working Paper 32948), a study by Anmol Bhandari, Tobey Kass, Thomas J. May, Ellen McGrattan, and Evan Schulz. The researchers analyze a new longitudinal dataset constructed from Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration records,...