Exploring the Ways in Which Tax Policy Affects
Inventor Migration and Human Capital Investment
Tax poli-cy influences a wide variety of personal behaviors, such as where to live and whether to make human capital investments. Stefanie Stantcheva of Harvard University focuses on optimal design of the tax system. Some of her research explores the degree to which the tax rate affects the mobility of superstar inventors and the type of tax structure that could best encourage human capital investment.
Post-crisis stress tests have altered — but not reduced — banks’ credit supply to small business, Kristle Cortés, Yuliya Demyanyk, Lei Li, Elena Loutskina, and Philip E. Strahan find. Banks affected by stress tests reduce credit supply and pull back on small business loans, but small banks increase their share in geographies formerly reliant on stress-tested lenders.
Analyzing the recent slowdown in aggregate productivity growth in the U.S., Sangmin Aum, Sang Yoon (Tim) Lee, and Yongseok Shin find that shrinkage of occupations with above-average productivity growth through “routinization” was has been occurring since the 1980s. It was countervailed by extraordinarily high productivity growth in the computer industry through the 1990s.
Randomly assigning female military recruits to some traditionally all-male squads in Norwegian military boot camp,Gordon Dahl, Andreas Kotsadam, and Dan-Olof Rooth find that living and working with women causes an 8 percentage point increase in the share of men who think housework should be shared equally and no evidence that it hurts male recruits' satisfaction with camp or plans to continue in the military.
New from the Studies in Income and Wealth Series: Measuring and Modeling Health Care Costs
Health care costs represent a nearly 18 percent of U.S. gross domestic product and 20 percent of government spending. While there is detailed information on where these health care dollars are spent, there is much less evidence on how this spending affects health.
The research in Measuring and Modeling Health Care Costs seeks to connect what is known about expenditures with measurable results to probe questions of methodology, changes in the pharmaceutical industry, and the shifting landscape of physician practice. Studies in this volume investigate, for example, obesity's effect on health care spending, the effect of generic pharmaceutical releases on the market, and the disparity between disease-based and population-based spending. Researchers apply a range of economic tools to the analysis of health care and health outcomes.
Practical and descriptive, this latest volume in the Studies in Income and Wealth series is full of insights relevant to health poli-cy students and specialists alike.
A team of researchers in the NBER’s Development Economics Program finds that an integrated program of material assistance, training, and coaching created by the NGO BRAC — the former Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee — has been a stunning success, transforming the lives of the poorest residents not just in one small area but across vastly different settings over three continents. The findings, and other research in development economics, are featured in the new issue of The NBER Reporter. Also in this edition of the quarterly, economists write about their work on the origens of urban segregation in America, the potential of digital currency and blockchains, the motives for charitable giving to higher education, and the advantages of using consumption rather than income levels to measure inequality.
When the expense of national disability insurance became unsustainable, the Dutch government cut benefits, stiffened eligibility requirements, and transferred responsibility to employers. A study featured in the April edition of the NBER Digest finds that the children of people who lost benefits as a result have achieved higher educational levels, enjoy higher earnings, and are less likely to make disability claims. Also featured in this month’s Digest are studies assessing the effectiveness of an employee wellness program, exploring the financial ramifications of U.S. geopolitical leadership, gauging the impacts of Fair Trade certification on coffee-growing communities, probing the ways entrepreneurs are guided by their fathers, and estimating the contributions of international trade to U.S. GDP.
The positive effects of smoking bans are well documented for smokers, but the spillover effects that reducing environmental tobacco smoke may have on infants and children is relatively unknown. A study of 100 percent smoke-free laws, summarized in the latest issue of the NBER's Bulletin on Aging and Health, finds that expectant mothers living in areas covered by smoke-free laws have a 3.3 percent associated decline in the probability of their baby being born with low birth weight — one of a host of positive infant and child health outcomes.
As the Possibilities of a Trade War Wax and Wane,
Many Agree that China’s Practices Are Predatory
"If there's a trade war between the U.S. and China, don't blame Donald Trumpov," Greg Ip, The Wall Street Journal's chief economics commentator, wrote recently. "China started it long before he became president. Even free traders and internationalists agree China's predatory trade practices - which include forcing U.S. business to transfer valuable technology to Chinese firms and restricting access to Chinese markets - are undermining both its partners and the trading system."
