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The Digest

Supply Chain Disruptions and Pandemic-Era Inflation
Article
The COVID-19 pandemic led to major disruptions in global supply chains. In The Causal Effects of Global Supply Chain Disruptions on Macroeconomic Outcomes: Evidence and Theory (NBER Working Paper 32098), Xiwen Bai, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Yiliang Li, and Francesco Zanetti analyze container ship data to measure these disruptions and investigate how they affected inflation during and after the pandemic.They find that the drop in inflation at the onset of the pandemic was...

Household Portfolio Rebalancing and Equity Market Fluctuations
Article
How investors adjust their portfolios in response to movements in asset prices and other shocks is a key input to asset pricing models, yet data limitations mean there is relatively little evidence on these behavioral responses, particularly for high-net-worth households. In Asset Demand of US Households (NBER Working Paper 32001), Xavier Gabaix, Ralph S. J. Koijen, Federico Mainardi, Sangmin Oh, and Motohiro Yogo leverage a new dataset on households’ portfolios to explore...

The Reporter

Program Report: Environment and Energy Economics, 2023
Article
Author(s): Meredith Fowlie & Christopher R. Knittel
Launched in 2007, the NBER’s Environment and Energy Economics (EEE) Program brings together scholars working on environmental, energy, and natural resource economics. The EEE Program now has 126 affiliated researchers, 53 of whom share an appointment in another NBER program. EEE researchers have produced 740 working papers since the last program report in June of 2016. The EEE Program holds two regular annual meetings and several specialized meetings throughout the year....

Lasting Effects of Segregation on Political Behavior and Economic Opportunity
Article
Author(s): Eric Chyn & Kareem Haggag
Segregation based on race and income is a defining feature of cities and schools across the United States. While Black Americans make up less than 14 percent of the overall population, the typical Black child lives in a neighborhood where Black families make up the majority of residents and attends a school where at least half their peers are also Black.1 These neighborhoods and schools also tend to have relatively high rates of poverty. Theory posits that segregation in...

The Bulletin on Retirement & Disability

The 25th Annual Meeting of the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium
Article
The Social Security Administration (SSA) convened its 2023 Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC) Meeting virtually on August 3–4. The meeting featured research funded through the NBER RDRC as well as through other RDRC centers based at Boston College, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin. Kilolo Kijakazi, Acting Commissioner of the SSA, provided welcoming remarks. She began by remembering Dr. William Spriggs, chair of the Department...

Inter-state Variation in Disability Applications during the Pandemic
Article
  The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated health and economic burdens have unfolded quite differently across states in the US. These differences are due to a variety of factors, including population density, socioeconomic status, health, and state policies. Variation across states in the timing and magnitude of the pandemic as well as in state characteristics and policies may have affected the dynamics of federal disability applications during this period. In...

The Bulletin on Health

How Informative Are Risk-Adjusted Hospital Quality Measures?
Article
Hospital quality indicators are intended to provide public information about differences in the quality of care across hospitals. The measures — such as 30-day mortality rates and 30-day hospitalization costs for admitted patients — are adjusted for the characteristics of each hospital’s patient population. In principle, these risk-adjusted indicators are not affected if a hospital treats especially unhealthy patients. If the risk adjustment is inadequate, however, the...

C-section Rates and Birth Outcomes
Article
Cesarean section (C-section) is the most common surgical procedure performed in the United States. Sarah Robinson, Heather Royer, and David Silver report that C-section rates for first-time, singleton births increased from 24 percent to 32 percent between 1989 and 2017 alongside significant changes in medical practices during this period. In 2001, for example, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists began recommending C-sections for breech...

The Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

Striking a Balance between Entrepreneurs and Investors
Article
In Do Entrepreneurs Want Control? And Should They Get What They Want? A Historical and Theoretical Exploration (NBER Working Paper 31106), Naomi R. Lamoreaux and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal develop a model of startup financing in which founders and outside investors compete for control of the firm. They apply their framework to study how companies’ outcomes, in particular subsequent innovations, are influenced by which group has the upper hand. The researchers find that no...

C-Suite Differences: Public versus Privately Held Firms
Article
Private equity (PE) firms’ business model is to acquire privately held companies, to change their strategy and operations with the goal of improving profitability and growth, and ultimately to sell the companies for a profit. The senior management team is replaced at a majority of private equity acquisitions. More than 40 percent of PE firms report that this is a key way to improve their acquisitions’ success. In The Market for CEOs: Evidence from Private Equity (NBER...