California’s AB 1228, which raised minimum wage for large fast-food chain workers to $20 per hour, raised fast-food wages by about 7 percent, from Arindrajit Dube www.nber.org/papers/w35171

Many mixed Nash equilibria are not optimal: with 3+ mixers, correlation can improve outcomes for almost any objective, from Kirill Rudov, Fedor Sandomirskiy, and Leeat Yariv www.nber.org/papers/w35170

Providing evidence that presumed-consent laws increase organ donation only when strictly enforced and family veto power is limited; weak opt-out regimes show negligible or even negative effects, from @alex8chan.bsky.social, Ayush Gupta, and Yetong Xu www.nber.org/papers/w35169

The supply- and demand-side effects of the unprecedented post-pandemic US immigration surge roughly canceled out, causing a muted inflation response, from Anton Cheremukhin, Sewon Hur, Ronald R. Mau, Karel Mertens, Alexander W. Richter, and Xiaoqing Zhou www.nber.org/papers/w35168

Featured in the latest Digest: Global Evidence of Business Use of AI www.nber.org/digest/20260...

Offshoring intermediate inputs to China dramatically reduced R&D by Canadian firms, as lower costs of existing products weakened incentives to develop new products, from Wulong Gu, Alla Lileeva, and Daniel Trefler www.nber.org/papers/w35167

Distributional impacts of Kenya’s 2016 interest-rate regulation, which capped bank lending rates but left one digital platform, called M-Shwari, exempt on the lending side, from Aroon Narayanan, Tavneet Suri, and Prashant Bharadwaj www.nber.org/papers/w35166

Using Danish data from 2004–2022 to examine income gradients in health among retirees ages 60–79 across functional, diagnosed, comprehensive, mental, and cognitive domains, from Paul Bingley, Nabanita Datta Gupta, Malene Kallestrup-Lamb, and Alexander O.K. Marin www.nber.org/papers/w35165

Chile's 1960s school construction boosted education and earnings, closed gender gaps, and increased second generation schooling, generating a marginal value of public funds return of 13, from Adrienne Lucas and Patrick McEwan www.nber.org/papers/w35042

How the global population living in extreme poverty fell dramatically over the period 1990-2025, from Vincent J. Armentano, Paul Niehaus, and Tom Vogl www.nber.org/papers/w35163

When the value of an activity comes from peer participation, bans only work if enough peers comply. Research suggests this isn't happening with the new Australian social media ban, from Bursztyn, Duckworth, Jiménez-Durán, Leonard, Milojević, Roth, and Sunstein www.nber.org/papers/w35162

Schools shape skills like cooperation, trust, and perseverance beyond cognition. Evidence suggests school interventions can build social capital and support cohesive societies, from Sule Alan www.nber.org/papers/w35161

RCT in 127 schools: shifting behavior management to students improves classroom climate. Academic gains persist 1.5 years, driven by peer networks among high-ability students, from Sule Alan, Kumar Biswas, Christina S. Hauser, and Shwetlena Sabarwal www.nber.org/papers/w35160

Regulating access to platform data requires balancing fair competition against the incentive to generate valuable data inputs, from Hanming Fang and Soo Jin Kim www.nber.org/papers/w35159

Return predictability is asset-specific and state-dependent, concentrating in stocks with large earnings surprises, high E/P, and low volume, and in low-liquidity regimes, from Lin William Cong, Guanhao Feng, Jingyu He, and Yuanzhi Wang www.nber.org/papers/w35158

How an automating technology affects career dynamics, human capital, and welfare in an economy where workers acquire skill through the tasks they perform, from Hassan Afrouzi, Andres Blanco, Andrés Drenik, and Erik Hurst www.nber.org/papers/w35157

Data from hundreds of thousands of ancient coins is used to reconstruct granular time series of trade and real consumption around the Mediterranean from the 4th to the 10th century, from @johannesmboehm.bsky.social and Thomas Chaney www.nber.org/papers/w35156

Automating AI research can trigger explosive economic growth. With full software automation and just 5% automation elsewhere, the model predicts a singularity within six years, from Tom Davidson, Basil Halperin, Thomas Houlden, and @akorinek.bsky.social www.nber.org/papers/w35155

A reputational model of accountability through replacement. When full discipline is possible, it works only in some equilibria; otherwise, selection eventually prevails in all, from Navin Kartik, Elliot Lipnowski, and Harry Pei www.nber.org/papers/w35154

A study of AI's recommendation for household portfolios, from Bruce I. Carlin, Ryan D. Israelsen, and Christopher F. Wazzan www.nber.org/papers/w35153

How did the US become a land of opportunity? The country's pioneering role in mass education was key to its rise in intergenerational mobility, from Lukas Althoff, Harriet M. Brookes Gray, and Hugo Reichardt www.nber.org/papers/w35152

A proposals of ways to understanding different views of meritocracy and links them to assignments of students to schools and workers to firms, from @durlauf.bsky.social www.nber.org/papers/w35151

Low bandwidth makes believing and acting harder simultaneously, producing a self-sealing trap. Four testable implications. Four confirmations, from Flavio Cunha, Snejana Nihtianova, Jessica Rood, and Anja-Lize van der Merwe www.nber.org/papers/w35150

Estimates for firm-specific amenity valuations using discrete choice experiments embedded in a large-scale survey of German workers linked to administrative records, from Sydnee Caldwell, Ingrid Haegele, and Jörg Heining www.nber.org/papers/w35149

Firms hiring under demand uncertainty face a tradeoff between holding permanent workers as a buffer and hiring from a spot market that thickens with use, from Alexandre Mas www.nber.org/papers/w35148

Combining geolocated data on turbines from the US Wind Turbine Database with data on over 120,000 households and consumer purchasing records to assess whether proximity to wind turbines affects mental and physical health from Niklas Rott, Douglas Almond, and Osea Giuntella www.nber.org/papers/w35131

A review of the growing literature on the origin, persistence, and evolution of cultural norms, from Paola Giuliano www.nber.org/papers/w35125

Millions of Americans enrolled in correspondence school in the early 1900s. By offering an alternative path to skilled work, these schools also amplified the returns to high school, from Daniela Vidart www.nber.org/papers/w35147

Medicaid spends $900B/year and mostly uses private insurers—but does it work? Introduction of "procured competition" to explain how and highlight what research still needs to answer, from Mark Shepard and Jacob Wallace www.nber.org/papers/w35146

An examination of the the annuity puzzle, showing that despite lifetime income benefits, annuities are rarely adopted. The study reviews causes and ways to improve uptake and decisions, from Hershfield, Shu, Brown, Hurwitz, Milevsky, Mitchell, and Toland www.nber.org/papers/w35145

accurate housing price indexes require aggregating from homogeneous local market areas weighted by dwelling units or interior space—a standard most repeat-sales and hedonic models currently miss, from Daniel Broxterman, William Larson, and Anthony Yezer www.nber.org/papers/w35144

A frontier AI tool in biology, AlphaFold2, is complementing rather than displacing experimental structural biologists and shifting focus toward previously under-studied proteins, from Ryan R. Hill and Carolyn Stein www.nber.org/papers/w35143

How human-defined goals influence the behavior of Large Language Models through purpose-conditioned cognition, from Sean S. Cao, Wei Jiang, and Hui Xu www.nber.org/papers/w35142

AI use for any business function is concentrated in selected sectors and large firms and primarily for augmentation of worker tasks rather than substitution, from Kathryn Bonney, Cory L. Breaux, Emin Dinlersoz, Lucia S. Foster, John C. Haltiwanger, and Aditya A. Pande www.nber.org/papers/w35141

Marriage markets are highly local: class segregation reduces interclass marriage, while racial segregation has a smaller effect on interracial marriage, from Benjamin Goldman, Jamie Gracie, and Sonya Porter www.nber.org/papers/w35140

Missing data can distort hedonic price indices. MICE-based multiple imputation improves stability, especially in small and heterogeneous real estate markets, from Miriam Steurer and Sabrina S. Spiegel www.nber.org/papers/w35139

A firm-level RCT in India finds that workplace democracy increases worker attendance, but managerial discretion improves productivity, from Namrata Kala and Madeline McKelway www.nber.org/papers/w35138

A progressive tax system combined with individual taxation of married couples can generate more revenue than the current household-based US system, from Hans A. Holter, Dirk Krueger, and Serhiy Stepanchuk www.nber.org/papers/w35137

Novel French historical bond data and a "twin bond" study estimates an expected state-contingent debt premium at issuance of 77 basis points and 146 bps using realized spreads, from Kris James Mitchener and Gonçalo A. Pina www.nber.org/papers/w35136

On August 1, 2025 Trump fired the head of the BLS and claimed that the agency’s data were “rigged.” The rise in uncertainty from this cost is estimated at about $20b in GDP, from @nickbloom.bsky.social, Erica L. Groshen, Duncan Hobbs, and Michael R. Strain www.nber.org/papers/w35135

Leveraging establishment-level data to examine the relation between corporate taxes and financial distress, from Mara Faccio and Stefano Manfredonia www.nber.org/papers/w35134

Optimal dynamic policy uses two constant subsidies to fix market power and adoption distortions; complementarities can create poverty or abundance traps, from Fernando E. Alvarez, Francisco J. Buera, and Nicholas Trachter www.nber.org/papers/w35133

National study finds lockable pouches reduce in-school phone use but have little effect on test scores. Discipline and student well-being worsen on adoption, improving thereafter, from Allcott, Baron, @tom.dee.bsky.social, Duckworth, Gentzkow, and Jacob www.nber.org/papers/w35132

During the Industrial Revolution, the English state was embedded in society and provided public goods successfully, through a largely unpaid bureaucracy, from Leander Heldring, Davis Kedrosky, James A. Robinson, and Matthias Weigand www.nber.org/papers/w35130

Open Call for Papers: Demographic Forces and US Labor Market Dynamics Conference. March 5, 2027 – San Francisco, CA. Submissions due by 11:59pm ET on Tuesday, December 1, 2026. www.nber.org/calls-papers...

Open Call for Papers: Emerging Markets: Navigating a Fragmented Global Economy Conference, December 10–11, 2026 — San José, Costa Rica. Submissions due 11:59pm ET on Tuesday, September 8, 2026 www.nber.org/calls-papers...

ICE activity in Trump’s second term reduces employment of immigrants in the US and of US-born workers in immigrant-heavy sectors, from Elizabeth Cox and Chloe N. East www.nber.org/papers/w35129

For a climate treaty to be maximally robust, strong, and self-enforcing, it must properly balance supply- and demand-side instruments, from Geir B. Asheim and Bård Harstad www.nber.org/papers/w35128

How households perceive the transmission of monetary policy and how these perceptions affect their decisions, from Francesco Grigoli, Damiano Sandri, @ygorodnichenko.bsky.social, and Olivier Coibion www.nber.org/papers/w35127

Study of optimal policy when undiversified owner-operators face financial frictions and a planner with limited instruments, applied to fertilizer subsidies, from Wyatt Brooks and Kevin Donovan www.nber.org/papers/w35126