Research Brief Library

Africa’s startup ecosystem is concentrated in a few hubs and led by highly educated founders. Startups demand equity, but that capital is supplied mainly by foreign investors and flows disproportionately to founders with foreign education or work experience, with important...

Restrictions on spending SNAP benefits on sugary drinks reduced the average SNAP household’s retail purchases of excluded drinks by 12.4% over the first half of 2026. In states that excluded only some sugary drinks, SNAP households partially substituted to non-excluded...

A new assessment for preschool-aged children generates two distinct measures of interest-type and deprivation-type curiosity, both internally consistent. Children’s vocabulary is associated with both measures, most strongly with deprivation-type curiosity, and the relationship is robust to a rich set of...

Behavioral interventions, or nudges, generate demand responses that are comparable to substantial price interventions. While nudges have high welfare returns at the margin, price instruments often generate larger total surplus at scale.

Generative AI has spread through K-12 schools faster than almost any classroom technology before it, reaching 90% of schools within three years. But adoption is not the same as integration, which includes the policies, training, and guidance that determine whether...

A new model abandons the usual shortcut of market clearing and considers how firms choose both prices and production before demand is known—revealing how rationing, slack, and uncertainty shape markups, productivity, and monetary transmission.

The dollar-based correspondent network offers banks in emerging markets and developing countries greater ability to make and receive payments compared to other currencies’ networks. Financial sanctions are powerful because they sever or degrade access to the dollar network, leaving targeted...

The COVID-19 fiscal stimulus increased household car purchases by 5.5 million vehicles (3.2%) during 2020–2022, but accounts for less than 20% of the rise in auto prices, which is instead largely attributable to supply constraints, easier credit, and a pandemic...

Compared to men, women place greater weight on balancing career and family when choosing their college major, a difference in preferences that accounts for about 30% of the gender earnings gap among college graduates. Gender quotas in high-return fields can...

This paper describes a model that addresses scalability issues surrounding policy proposals by incorporating “Option C thinking” into a program’s initial design, which anticipates at-scale implementation constraints.