NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH


The Economics and Politics
of Greenhouse Gas Abatement


Kinntel NBER Sequence.01

There is broad consensus among economists that the most efficient way to reduce greenhouse gases is to put a price on carbon emissions, according to Christopher Knittel of MIT, a research associate in the NBER’s Environment and Energy Economics Program. So why does government policy often rely on other strategies, such as requiring use of biofuels. Knittel discusses research on the costs and benefits of such strategies in the video above. A selection of studies in this area may be found on the NBER Research on Energy Issues page.
New NBER Research

25 January 2017

The Distributional Impact of Fuel Economy Standards?

Many countries use fuel economy standards to reduce transportation-related carbon dioxide emissions.Lucas W. Davis and Christopher R. Knittelshow that these standards impose a constraint on automakers which creates an implicit subsidy for fuel-efficient vehicles and an implicit tax for fuel-inefficient vehicles.
( ...more... )

24 January 2017

Capital Flows and Industry Growth Prospects

Until the mid-1990s, Dong Lee, Han Shin, and René M. Stulz find, firms in industries with high "Tobin's q" ratios -- high ratios of market value to the replacement cost of assets -- attracted more capital than their lower-q counterparts. This pattern has reversed since the mid-'90s, as firms in high-q industries increasingly repurchase shares rather than raising new capital.
( ...more... )

23 January 2017

Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence
on Technology-Aided Instruction in India

Indian students selected by lottery to receive individually customized, technology-aided after-school instruction had large increases in test scores in math and Hindi over a 4.5-month period, an experiment by Karthik Muralidharan, Abhijeet Singh, and Alejandro J. Ganimian shows. The relative gain was greater for academically weaker students, and the program was highly cost-effective, both in terms of productivity per dollar and per unit of time.
( ...more... )
More Research

NBER in the News


A Challenge to the 'Secular Stagnation' Theorye
The Wall Street Journal
January 24, 2017
 Read the Research

Blame Technology, Not Longer Life Spans, for Health Spending Increases
The New York Times
January 23, 2017
 Read the Research

Why you'll never live up to your older sibling's accomplishments
The Washington Post
January 23, 2017
 Read the Research here and here

The U.K.'s Threat to Weaponize Tax Is No Bluff
Bloomberg
January 23, 2017
 Read the Research

View all news

Is American Entrepreneurship in Crisis?
An NBER Conference Explores the Issue

Entrepreneurship is an important contributor to productivity growth in the American economy, and there is currently concern that American entrepreneurship is in serious decline. Participants in an NBER conference this autumn, convened with the support of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation explored the measurement of entrepreneurial activity and the factors that affect it. They found that while the number of new firms has declined in recent years, the growth potential of the firms that are started has not; it actually has risen since 2010. Researchers also reported that labor productivity grows more rapidly at young firms than at their more established counterparts, and investigated how a number of public policies, such as state corporate income taxes and minimum wages, affect the rate of start-up activity.

Follow us on
Twitter RSS facebook

This Week's Working Papers


Call for Applications

Funding Opportunity for Determinants of Life Expectancy

Call for Papers

NBER Summer Institute
Challenges of Globalization in the Measurement of National Accounts
Trade and Labor Markets

New in the NBER Digest

Size of Donations in a Field Experiment in Texas




An experiment in which gifts were made or offered to Texas A&M University alumni finds that the expense of providing and shipping the gifts exceeded the donations gained from the gifting, researchers report in the latest edition of The NBER Digest. Other studies featured in the January Digest cover research on the comparative effects of taxes and government spending on economic output, the phenomenon of bias among ride-sharing drivers, the effects of online competition on brick-and-mortar schools, the early success of an online master's in computer science program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the earnings gap between white men and black men.

Download the PDF

New in the NBER Reporter

The Program on Children




Public programs for children and youth have expanded rapidly in recent decades, and so have the volume and scope of research into these programs' effectiveness. Janet Currie of Princeton University and Anna Aizer of Brown University, codirectors of the NBER's Program on Children, provide a broad overview of this work in the new edition of The NBER Reporter. Also featured in this issue of the quarterly are articles by NBER-affiliated economists on research into the forces of agglomeration and dispersion, income risk over the life cycle and the business cycle, effects of housing prices on aggregate economic activity, and accountability and measurement of ability among teachers.

Download the PDF

New in the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health

Long-Term Care Hospitals
Discharge Patients Strategically




Long-term care hospitals are reimbursed with a lump sum payment after treating a patient a specified number of days, with smaller reimbursements before that. A study in the most recent edition of The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health finds that these hospitals discharged patients after the lump sum payment day with much higher frequency than before the two-tiered payment system was put in place. This issue also features research examining how raising the early retirement age impacts retirement decisions in Austria and how reductions in child blood lead levels improve test scores.

Download the PDF

Frequently Requested Items

Business Cycle (Recession & Recovery) Page
Latest announcement Relating to the Current Business Cycle (9/20/10)
 






 
  
Publications
Activities
Meetings
NBER Videos
Themes
Data
People
About

National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-868-3900; email: info@nber.org

Contact Us