Influenza is among the top ten causes of death in the United States, and even less-severe cases of the flu can affect worker productivity and consume substantial healthcare resources. Research summarized in the current edition of the NBER's Bulletin on Aging and Health finds a significant positive relationship across states between average sunlight exposure and reduced levels of the flu.

Enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 was followed by a 9 percent decline in large banks' issuance of relatively small commercial and industrial loans and an even greater percentage decline at smaller banks, a study summarized in the latest edition of The NBER Digest shows. The act was recently revised to ease regulation of small and medium-sized banks. Also featured in the June Digest is research exploring the use of online prices to calculate purchasing power parity, analyzing the income consequences of women retiring early, measuring educational and income benefits of conditional cash transfers, and gauging the effects of job-search assistance, and examining the impact of cyberattacks.

Economists have long recognized that altruism is an important part of human behavior. That said, some charitable behavior is doubtless driven in part by self-interest: Donors might expect something in return, such as prestige, gifts, or the ability to signal their virtue to others. A dataset from an anonymized major research university has given researchers an opportunity to gauge the degree to which such expectations play a roll. Their findings are in the 2018:1 issue of The NBER Reporter. Also in this quarterly issue of The Reporter, economists write about their studies of the advantages of using consumption rather than income levels to measure inequality, new approaches to helping the world’s poorest people out of poverty, the causes of segregation in U.S. cities, and the future potential of cryptocurrencies and blockchains.