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Research Briefs

The latest commentary and analysis from BFI’s leading scholars in shorter, digestible forms.
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Research Briefs·Sep 4, 2024

What Middle-Income Countries Can Learn from America’s Innovation System

Somik Lall and Ufuk Akcigit
The American model of innovation has long been the envy of the world. From the garage tinkerers of Silicon Valley to the research labs of prestigious universities, the United States has consistently churned out groundbreaking technologies that have reshaped industries...
Topics: Technology & Innovation
Research Briefs·Sep 4, 2024

Managing Margins: PE Effects on Financial, Physical, and Human Capital

Michael R. Richards, Maggie Shi, and Christopher M. Whaley
Private equity’s influence on hospital performance includes permanent improvements in hospital patient volumes and revenues, reductions in full-time employees, restrained technology adoption, and improved operating margins.
Topics: Health care
Research Briefs·Aug 29, 2024

Have CEOs Changed?

Yann Decressin, Steven Neil Kaplan, and Morten Sorensen
CEOs hired in recent years are similar in terms of their overall ability and interpersonal orientation compared to CEOs hired earlier. The same four factors revealed by earlier research still explain roughly half of the variation in CEOs’ characteristics: overall...

Interactive Charts

Rich, dynamic charts exploring Chicago Economics research in new and unique ways.
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Interactive Research Briefs·Aug 21, 2024

Corporate Income Tax Revenue & Investment around the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act

Interactive Research Briefs·Jun 18, 2024

Trace the Historical Origins of Today’s Federal Student Loan Crisis

Interactive Research Briefs·May 14, 2024

Return to Office and the Tenure Distribution

Austin Wright, David Van Dijcke, and Florian Gunsilius
Return-to-office (RTO) mandates drive employees away from firms, with senior employees leaving at the highest rates, likely leading to significant human capital costs in terms of output, productivity, innovation, and competitiveness for the companies implementing strict RTO policies.
Topics: COVID-19, Employment & Wages

Podcasts

Podcasts featuring captivating stories and deep insight on a variety of economic issues of the day.
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Podcast Sep 3, 2024

Promises Delivered? The Economic Effects of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Tess Vigeland and Eric Zwick
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a landmark piece of tax legislation from the first year of the Trump administration, overhauled the tax code for both individuals and businesses. In this episode of The Pie, Eric Zwick, Professor...
Topics: Tax & Budget
Podcast Aug 20, 2024

Creative Destruction: Why Innovation is Crucial for Growth

Ufuk Akcigit and Tess Vigeland
The primary contributor to long-run growth is productivity: A country’s ability to raise residents’ standards of living depends on its ability to boost workers’ output. In this episode of The Pie, Ufuk Akcigit, The Arnold C. Harberger Professor in Economics...
Podcast Aug 6, 2024

Using Machine Learning to Predict—and Prevent—Police Misconduct

Tess Vigeland and Greg Stoddard
In the wake of numerous high-profile incidents of police use of force, particularly against Black Americans, law enforcement agencies across the United States are confronting issues of officer misconduct. Whether such misconduct is preventable depends in part on whether it...

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