National Bureau of Economic Research
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Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: The Effects of Reforms on Retirement Behavior
news article
Axel Börsch-Supan and Courtney Coile, editors.
Employment among older men and women has increased dramatically in recent years, reversing a downward trend in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: The Effects of Reforms on Retirement Behavior examines how changing retirement incentives have reshaped labor force participation trends among older workers.
The chapters feature country-specific analyses for Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain,…
From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries
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Working Group Report: Market Design
article
The Market Design Working Group, established in 2009 under the leadership of Susan Athey and Parag Pathak, is a preeminent research forum in the field of market design. The working group meets annually, alternating between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Palo Alto, California, to present research that bridges theoretical economics and practical applications, all focused on what The Economist aptly characterized as “an intelligently designed invisible hand.” Research in market design has been celebrated in academic circles, as evidenced by recognitions like the 2012 Nobel Prize for work on matching markets and the 2020 Nobel Prize for auction theory, and has also been instrumental in catalyzing tangible reforms in real-world institutions and markets.
One feature that sets market design apart…
From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability
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Health Inequality and Economic Disparities by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender
article
In Health Inequality and Economic Disparities by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender (NBER Working Paper 32971 an earlier version, NBER RDRC Paper NB23-11), Nicolò Russo, Rory McGee, Mariacristina De Nardi, Margherita Borella, and Ross Abram use data from the Health and Retirement Study over the period 1996–2018 to evaluate measures of health inequality in middle age and the consequences of such health disparities.
They consider two health measures: self-reported health status, measured by the response to a survey question that asks individuals to rate their health as excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor, and...
Featured Working Papers
February 21, 2025
Results from a student survey suggest that under a standard income-driven repayment (IDR) plan for student loans similar to recent US plans, 36 percent of students underinvest in their human capital, and many correspondingly receive debt forgiveness in the long run, according to Chao Fu, Xiaomeng Li, and Basit Zafar.
February 20, 2025
In a study of product choices and post-purchase consumption, Imke Reimers, Christoph Riedl, and Joel Waldfogel find that if video game consumers purchased games based on personalized suggestions, they could achieve 90 percent of their status quo playtime with only 40 percent of their current spending.
February 19, 2025
Hamid Noghanibehambari and Jason Fletcher find that African Americans who changed their racial identity and “passed” as white in the late 19th and early 20th centuries lived approximately 9.4 months longer, on average, than their non-passing siblings.
February 14, 2025
Bryan Bollinger, Kenneth Gillingham, and A. Justin Kirkpatrick find that households in the bottom third of the wealth distribution discount the future payoffs from rooftop solar installations at a rate of about 15 percent per year, compared with 10 percent for those in the top third of the wealth distribution.
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