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From the NBER Bulletin on Health

How Informative Are Risk-Adjusted Hospital Quality Measures? Figure

How Informative Are Risk-Adjusted Hospital Quality Measures?

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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 quality measures could confound patient health status with hospital quality. 

In Are Hospital Quality Indicators Causal? (NBER Working Paper 31789), Amitabh Chandra, Maurice Dalton, and Douglas O. Staiger assess risk-adjusted hospital quality measures. Specifically, they ask how well these measures predict changes...

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 3

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 3

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Benjamin Jones and Josh Lerner, editors.

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 3 synthesizes key findings about entrepreneurial and innovative activity in the US economy, conveying insights on contemporary challenges and providing an analytical base for policy design. 

In the first paper, Jorge Guzman, Fiona Murray, Scott Stern, and Heidi Williams examine regional innovation engines and highlight the place-specific actions, potential bottlenecks, and roles of different stakeholders in…

A research summary from the monthly NBER Digest

Measuring the Informal Economy, with a Literary Twist figure

Measuring the Informal Economy, with a Literary Twist

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Novelist Victor Hugo offered insightful analysis of the underground economy in his 1862 novel Les Misérables: “when work is lacking, when the trade is nil, the taxpayer resists the tax by shortage, exhausts and exceeds the deadlines, and the State spends a lot of money in duress and enforcement fees. When work abounds … the tax is easily paid.” In Rethinking the Informal Economy and the Hugo Effect (NBER Working Paper 31963), Francesco Pappadà and Kenneth S. Rogoff develop a novel measure of the size of the off-the-books economy in the countries in the European Union, and they…

From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries

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Generic Drugs: A Healthcare Market Trial

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Can healthcare markets deliver access, affordability, and quality? While markets for hospital and physician services both have unique challenges, generic drug pricing is often seen as a success story for market forces. After patent-related exclusivity ends, prices fall dramatically. Consumers have access to a range of highly clinically valuable products at low prices. Is this success unique or can it be replicated in other parts of the healthcare sector?

As in other healthcare markets, insurers play a crucial role in determining both prices and utilization of prescription drugs. Patients purchase pharmaceuticals from a pharmacy, either in a physical location or by mail. Like many retailers of consumer goods, pharmaceutical retailers purchase products from wholesalers and manufacturers. A unique feature in the financing of…

From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability

Social Security and Retirement around the World

Social Security and Retirement around the World

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Over the past 25 years, labor force participation at older ages has increased dramatically. In the 12 countries that are part of the NBER’s International Social Security (ISS) project, participation among those aged 60 to 64 has risen by an average of over 20 percentage points for men and over 25 percentage points for women.

In The Effects of Reforms on Retirement Behavior: Introduction and Summary (NBER Working Paper 31979), authors Axel Börsch-Supan and Courtney Coile report on the most recent work of the ISS project. The current analysis builds on previous project phases which showed that changes in health and education could…

From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

C-Suite Differences: Public versus Privately Held Firms figure

C-Suite Differences: Public versus Privately Held Firms

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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 Working Paper 30899), Paul Gompers, Steven Kaplan, and Vladimir Mukharlyamov compare the characteristics of CEOs installed by PE firms to the characteristics of those who become...

Featured Working Papers

Elisa Rubbo finds that US deflation and inflation in 2020 were due to industry-specific shocks, while since 2021 inflation has primarily been driven by aggregate factors including monetary and fiscal policies.

Emergency department closures are associated with increased drug-related deaths among White and younger women, and in increased heart attack mortality in the South and West, a study by Pinka Chatterji, Chun-Yu Ho, and Xue Wu finds.

After studying transportation choices, congestion, and other externalities in Chicago, Milena Almagro, Felipe Barbieri, Juan Camilo Castillo, Nathaniel G. Hickok, and Tobias Salz estimate that welfare would be increased by charging almost nothing for using public transit, increasing the frequency of trains, and lowering the frequency of buses.  

Donghoon Lee, Anirban Basu, Jerome A. Dugan, and Pinar Karaca-Mandic find that  for-profit inpatient psychiatric hospitals in California are more likely than not-for-profits to treat high-cost patients, but they do not find any evidence that they are enhancing profitability by choosing patients for reasons other than need for care.

Receiving radiation therapy following a breast cancer diagnosis increases patients’ employment ten years later by 37 percent, and earnings by 45 percent, in addition to having lifesaving benefits, according to a study of Danish data by N. Meltem Daysal, William N. Evans, Mikkel Hasse Pedersen, and Mircea Trandafir.

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Books & Chapters

Through a partnership with the University of Chicago Press, the NBER publishes the proceedings of four annual conferences as well as other research studies associated with NBER-based research projects.

Research Spotlights

NBER researchers discuss their work on subjects of wide interest to economists, policymakers, and the general public. Recordings of more-detailed presentations, keynote addresses, and panel discussions at NBER conferences are available on the Lectures page.

Research Spotlight
An investigation of the role of anonymity in online communication and social media posting.    ...
Research Spotlight
In recognition of Black History Month, Research Associate Conrad Miller of the University of California, Berkeley,...
Research Spotlight
In recognition of Black History Month, Research Associate Trevon Logan of The Ohio State University, who directs the...
Research Spotlight
A growing fraction of US medical care is delivered through integrated healthcare systems that include many medical...
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