National Bureau of Economic Research

A growing share of US college students work part- or full-time to support themselves while studying, a trend that seems likely to continue as tuition costs rise and workers in sectors affected by technological change return to school to retrain and upskill. According to the US Department of Education, 64 percent of full-time undergraduates and 86 percent of part-time students work at least 20 hours per week.

In Assessing the Costs of Balancing College and Work Activities: The Gig Economy Meets Online Education (NBER Working Paper 32357), Esteban Aucejo, A. Spencer Perry, and Basit Zafar find that the flexibilities afforded by online study and gig work — two relatively recent developments — can mitigate the frictions students have typically faced when combining work...

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) spends nearly $1 trillion per year on healthcare expenditures for Medicare beneficiaries. With such large payments to healthcare providers, CMS is concerned about promoting quality of care. Over the last few decades, it has created several programs that reward hospitals and other providers financially for achieving measurable outcomes., These are commonly known as pay-for-performance, or P4P, programs. Their goal is to give providers larger financial payments in the future if current quality measures are high or improving.

The economic issues addressed in P4P programs are challenging. Without any quality incentives, there is concern that providers would strive to increase the quantity of care…

Immigrants play a significant role in the entrepreneurial landscape. In the United States, immigrants are 80 percent more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans. More than half of America's billion-dollar startup companies trace their roots to immigrant founders. There is limited research, however, on the factors that influence immigrants' decisions about where to locate their startup businesses. 

In The Effect of Immigration Policy on Founding Location Choice: Evidence from Canada's Start-up Visa Program (NBER Working Paper 31634), Saerom Lee and Britta Glennon investigate the impact of Canada's Start-up Visa Program on US-based…

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 births. The rising rate of C-sections has sparked a debate about whether this procedure is being overused. 

In Geographic Variation in Cesarean Sections in the United States: Trends, Correlates, and Other Interesting Facts (NBER Working Paper 31871), the researchers study how cross-county differences in C-section usage correlate with infant and maternal...

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…