The Martin Feldstein Lecture is an annual lecture, presented during the NBER Summer Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The lecture, which was initiated in 2009 by the NBER Board of Directors, ...

We document that, after remaining almost constant for almost 30 years, real labor productivity at U.S. restaurants surged over 15% during the COVID pandemic. This surge has persisted even as many ...

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in ...

We conducted a large-scale field experiment in Granada, Spain, to assess the motivating effect on blood donation of matching each attempt to donate with a charitable contribution pledge for children ...

In contracting out, monitoring is an important policy tool to extract information on firm quality and incentivize quality provision. This paper examines a central quality inspection of nursing homes, ...

During academic year 2024-25, the NBER is providing fellowship support for graduate students studying the economics of aging and health, behavioral macroeconomics, and consumer financial management.

We present a new model of competition between digital media platforms with targeted advertising. The model adds new insights around how user heterogeneity and overlap, along with user and advertiser ...

N. Gregory Mankiw, Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University, presented the 2025 Martin Feldstein Lecture on "The Fiscal Future," examining the trajectory of US government debt — ...

We study the welfare consequences of choice architecture for online privacy using a field experiment that randomizes cookie ...

We analyze the effect of California's $20 fast food minimum wage, which was enacted in September 2023 and went into effect in April 2024, on employment in the fast food sector. In unadjusted data from ...

Steve Jobs described computers as “bicycles for the mind,” a tool that allowed people to dramatically leverage their capabilities. This paper presents a formal model of cognitive tools and ...

We then document robust evidence consistent with two patenting strategies that may block biosimilar competition: thicketing and evergreening, whereby firms supplement primary patents with a dense web ...