National Bureau of Economic Research
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Federal Fiscal Aid to State and Local Governments and COVID-19 Mortality
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, the US federal government provided nearly $1 trillion in fiscal assistance to state and local governments with the goal of supporting public health, public schools, and local economic recovery. In Health Impacts of Federal Pandemic Aid to State and Local Governments (NBER Working Paper 33699), Jeffrey Clemens and Anwita Mahajan investigate how federal fiscal assistance affected population health.
To address the potential endogeneity of aid, namely the possibility that more aid flowed to states that were harder-hit by COVID-19, the researchers leverage the fact that states with...
From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability
NBER Retirement and Disability Research Center Winds Down Operations
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This is the final issue of the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability, coinciding with the closure of the NBER Retirement and Disability Research Center (RDRC). The RDRC was a vibrant hub of research activity from 2003 to 2025 and had a significant impact on stimulating analytic work on Social Security and the wellbeing of Social Security beneficiaries across a wide community of investigators at universities across the United States.
Over 22 years, from the launch of the NBER Retirement Research Center in 2003, through the addition of the NBER Disability Research Center in 2012 and their consolidation into the NBER Retirement and Disability Research Center in 2019, to the closing of the Centers program this year, the RDRC supported more than 400 research projects.
The RDRC was funded by the Social Security Administration (SSA) through a cooperative agreement...
From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries

Collusion in Public Procurement
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In both developed and developing countries, annual spending on public procurement averages about 12 percent of national GDP. The efficiency of public procurement can have a long-run impact on the growth and productivity of countries. A major challenge in achieving efficiency, however, is the possibility of collusion among suppliers. Collusive agreements increase prices, leading to wasted tax dollars or, in the case of developing countries, wasted foreign aid. These agreements often shield inefficient firms from competition, diverting resource allocation to low-performing sectors of the economy. Furthermore, the transparency requirements inherent to public procurement, such as public databases of past tenders and associated bids, can facilitate the coordination and enforcement of collusive...
From the NBER Bulletin on Health

Medicaid’s Lifesaving Effects on Low-Income Adults
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Lower-income adults in the US are more likely to lack health insurance and to suffer worse health, a correlation that raises the long-standing question of whether health insurance affects health. In Saved by Medicaid: New Evidence on Health Insurance and Mortality from the Universe of Low-Income Adults (NBER Working Paper 33719), Angela Wyse and Bruce D. Meyer present new evidence on this question by evaluating the consequences of recent Medicaid expansions.
To study the impact of Medicaid on mortality, the researchers exploit variation in the state-level adoption and timing of expansions of Medicaid eligibility to childless, nondisabled, non-elderly adults. Most, but…
From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship as an Alternative to Flexibility at Work
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The surge in remote work in recent years has transformed labor markets, with potentially important implications for the interaction between workplace flexibility and entrepreneurship. In Hustling from Home? Work from Home Flexibility and Entrepreneurial Entry (NBER Working Paper 33237), John M. Barrios, Yael Hochberg, and Hanyi (Livia) Yi explore whether the increased flexibility provided by work-from-home (WFH) arrangements has affected entrepreneurial decisions. They focus on the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment and analyze how the sudden shift to remote work affected new business creation. Guided…
Featured Working Papers
Tariff shocks have historically been a minor driver of US business cycle fluctuations, even during episodes of substantial increases such as those associated Presidents Nixon (1971), Ford (1975), and Trump (2018), according to Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé and Martín Uribe.
Amitabh Chandra and Connie Xu find that life scientists who move from institutions with lower to higher average productivity experience significant productivity boosts. They estimate that roughly half of the variation in these scientists’ research output is attributable to their institutional home, and that the presence of star scientists is a key determinant of institutional productivity.
Claudio Ferraz, Luiz C. Moura, Lars Norden, and Ricardo Schechtman report that Brazilian firms investigated as part of Operação Lava Jato, one of the world's largest anti-corruption crackdowns, experienced sizable declines in employment, wage bills, and credit access.
Short-term changes in incomes or prices cannot explain the historically low fertility rates among high-income countries, according to a study by Melissa Schettini Kearney and Phillip B. Levine. Rather, they point to a broad reordering of adult priorities, with parenthood occupying a diminished role.
Marika Cabral and Marcus Dillender document wide variation in doctors’ evaluation of workers who file workers’ compensation claims. Being evaluated by a doctor with a one standard deviation higher approval rate for continued benefits is associated with a 20% longer out-of-work stay, and more than a 10% increase in the change of receiving permanent impairment benefits.
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