Research

New NBER Papers

Latest Books

Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth

Book

Author(s): Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, Janet C. Gornick, Barry Johnson & Arthur Kennickell

The Digest

Impacts of the European Union’s Data Protection Regulations
Article
The European Union enacted its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect the personal data of citizens and harmonize privacy policies across member states. The regulation strengthened consumers’ privacy rights and required app developers to ask customers’ permission before they could use their data to, say, target online ads or conduct other revenue-producing activities. Developers also had to guarantee that customers could access, rectify, erase, and...

Could the IRS Prepopulate Income Tax Returns?
Article
Americans spend an average of $200 and 12.5 hours per year filing individual income tax returns. More than 40 percent of filers, particularly filers with lower incomes, could save that money and time if the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) prefilled their tax returns, Lucas Goodman, Katherine Lim, Bruc(e Sacerdote, and Andrew Whitten find in Automatic Tax Filing: Simulating a Prepopulated Form 1040 (NBER Working Paper 30008). Using a random, representative sample of...

The Reporter

Program Report: The Economics of Aging
Article
Author(s): Jonathan Skinner
When the NBER’s Program on the Economics of Aging began in 1986 under the direction of David Wise, the baby-boom generation was between the ages of 22 and 40. Long-run projections at the time forecast that the United States would transition to an older population distribution. Today, with baby boomers ranging in age from 58 to 76, that projected future is the ongoing reality of our nation. One-fifth of the population will be age 65 or older in the next decade. Since its...

The Promise of Linked Historical Census Data
Article
Author(s): Katherine Eriksson
Individual records from the 1950 US Census were publicly released on April 1, 2022. Economic historians had been waiting for this day for 10 years. This data source, like the individual-level data from earlier censuses, makes it possible to locate the information reported by a specific person. I found the records for my grandparents along with those for my mother, who was born in December 1949. They lived in rural Lincoln County, Kentucky. My grandfather, Bernard...

The Bulletin on Retirement & Disability

Opioid Use by SSDI Beneficiaries and the Effect of Opioid Prescribing on SSDI Claiming
Article
Chronic pain is a leading cause of work disability and a primary reason for receipt of SSDI benefits. Prescription opioids are frequently prescribed for chronic pain, but their use has been scrutinized in recent years due to concerns about addiction and overdose. Understanding how common prescription opioid use is among SSDI beneficiaries and how opioid use affects employment and SSDI applications is critical to the SSDI program. Researchers Nicole Maestas, Tisamarie...

Improving Understanding of the Retirement Earnings Test
Article
The decisions that prospective retirees make about when to stop working and when to claim Social Security benefits can have profound impacts on their financial well-being in retirement. Yet many older workers have an incomplete understanding of relevant Social Security policies, including the Retirement Earnings Test (RET). Under the RET, retirees who claim before the Full Retirement Age (FRA) and have earnings above a specified (relatively low) threshold receive...

The Bulletin on Health

VA Hospital Care Improves Health and Lowers Cost
Article
Millions of elderly veterans are “dually eligible” to receive hospital care in two distinct settings: at public facilities funded by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) or at private hospitals that accept Medicare reimbursement. The choice of setting is consequential for both the costs of their care and health outcomes, as demonstrated in Is There a VA Advantage? Evidence from Dually Eligible Veterans (NBER Working Paper 29765) by David C. Chan, Jr., David Card,...

Heterogeneous Mental Health Effects of Shocks to Housing Prices
Article
US house prices fell by 34 percent between 2006 and 2012. But the downturn was more severe in some parts of the country than in others. For example, home values in Phoenix and Las Vegas dropped by 46 and 60 percent, respectively. In contrast, house prices in Pittsburgh and Buffalo didn’t fall at all, instead increasing by 5 and 6 percent over this time period.   How did the overall housing downturn, and the associated Great Recession, affect mental health among...

The Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

The Rise of Private Financing for Entrepreneurs
Article
In Private or Public Equity? The Evolving Entrepreneurial Finance Landscape (NBER Working Paper 29532), Michael Ewens and Joan Farre-Mensa survey the changes in the US entrepreneurial finance market over the last two decades. Their study begins by describing the differences between publicly listed and private firms, and then explores how several regulatory, technological, and competitive changes affecting both startups and investors have affected the costs and...

Inventors and Innovation Respond to Tax Incentives
Article
Income taxes raise government revenue, finance government spending programs, and redistribute income from high to low earners. These taxes can also induce taxpayers to work less, evade taxes, or move to lower-tax locations. The economic theory of optimal tax design tries to set tax rates to balance these trade-offs. In The Effects of Taxes on Innovation: Theory and Empirical Evidence (NBER Working Paper 29359), Stefanie Stantcheva investigates whether income...