We develop and quantify a novel growth theory in which economic activity endogenously shifts from material production to quality improvements. Consumers derive utility from goods with differing ...

Can the enhanced mobility created by transportation infrastructure investments help people to avoid environmental extremes? We use transaction records from China’s card payment system to measure ...

This project aims to modernize U.S. economic statistics by evaluating the integration of high-frequency private-sector data, such as credit card transactions, job postings, and online prices, into ...

What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of ...

This paper documents persistence in the power of elite families in Central China despite dynastic change. We study the impact of the fall of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) on couples and their ...

This chapter reviews the literature on the relationship between culture and political preferences. We distinguish conceptually between the direct cultural transmission of political ideology and the ...

In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability, ...

Canonical economic theory clearly predicts means-tested transfers will reduce work. We provide new evidence on this question in the context of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the ...

We provide a comprehensive overview of earnings, income and wealth inequality based on the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances from the United States. We document the current state of inequality and its ...

We address three core questions about the hypothesized role of newly emerging job categories ('new work') in counterbalancing the erosive effect of task-displacing automation on labor demand: what is ...