Using quarterly micro data on capacity utilization among Swedish manufacturing firms, we show that idiosyncratic factors are much more important than aggregate influences in explaining variation in ...

Many US federal agencies model the economic and budgetary effects of research and development (R&D) investments -- both public R&D and private R&D -- as if R&D were the same as any other form of ...

Differentiated product consumption choices made without full information can lead to welfare losses from regret and missed opportunities, but a lack of post-purchase usage data has prevented their ...

We decompose inflation into the component due to macroeconomic shocks and the granular residuals capturing the impact of individual firms and product categories, respectively. In advanced economies, ...

We construct a framework that defines optimal outcomes in criminal courts, and we use this framework to interpret and organize the existing literature on racial disparities in pretrial detention, ...

Younger entrepreneurs are disadvantaged by traditional loan underwriting, which relies heavily on personal credit scores. With data from three fintech companies, we show that incorporating timely ...

The US trade war against China in 2018–2019 can either enhance or diminish the US soft power in China, depending on whether it is recognized as legitimate by Chinese citizens. We study how the ...

Standard deficit accounting neglects the growth dividend: the amount by which annual GDP growth shrinks the debt-GDP ratio. America's growth dividend has more than doubled since the Great Recession ...

This article provides a concise narrative overview of the rapidly growing empirical literature on financial literacy and financial education. We first discuss stylized facts on the demographic ...

How Do Researchers Become Affiliated Scholars? NBER affiliates are selected through a rigorous and competitive process that begins with a call for nominations each February. Program directors, with ...

We explore how socio-economic background shapes academia, collecting the largest dataset of U.S. academics’ backgrounds and research output. Individuals from poorer backgrounds have been severely ...

Any fiscal path is sustainable if future fiscal policy responds sufficiently to high deficits. Previous work found that Congress reduced the deficit during 1984-2003 when projected deficits rose. We ...