Research Brief Library

New technologies that exhibit economies of scale, that confer low adoption costs for new entrants, and that require organizational learning, give rise to superstar firms for a long period of time. These firms enjoy systematic advantages relative to both firms...

Parental income and family structure during childhood and adolescence affect adult income, with these familial influences strongest in middle childhood and adolescence. The effects of income and family structure trajectories exhibit a complementary relationship during key developmental periods.

China’s policymaking has historically been highly decentralized, with 82% of local policies originating as local initiatives, but since 2013 has become substantially more centralized as political incentives shifted from rewarding bottom-up innovation to strict enforcement of central policies. Top-down industrial...

Parent-child dyads were randomly assigned to use Chat2Learn, a low-cost, text-messaging tool that delivers open-ended conversation prompts, in a brief laboratory experiment. Parents spend less time inattentive or withdrawn during interaction, and produce higher-quality language input and more open-ended questions.

While economic development has coincided with religious decline in wealthy countries, emerging and developing nations show persistent and often increasing religiosity, with traditional beliefs coexisting alongside major world religions. This religious divergence challenges standard secularization theories and reveals that religious...

Peer pressure within minority communities creates complex, non-linear effects on language learning that can make small policy changes produce dramatically unpredictable shifts in community-wide learning patterns. When individuals can choose between full fluency, basic skills, or no learning, conformity pressures...

While 61% of parents could save enough to cover half of their child’s college costs, they still believe their savings would be meaningless, suggesting behavioral barriers may be as important as financial ones for college affordability.

Analysis of intergenerational mobility during China and Russia’s transitions from central planning reveals that China’s higher educational mobility was largely driven by structural changes. Russia demonstrates greater steady-state educational mobility once transitional dynamics are accounted for, while both countries exhibit...

This work reveals that educators can be influenced by research evidence when considering adoption of educational technology, but the results are mixed and suggest differential effects of an information intervention highlighting the effectiveness of math apps on pre-k teachers, elementary...

Trust plays a significant role in borrowers’ decisions to transact with banks, with higher-quality borrowers taking the lead in avoiding transactions with banks under enforcement.