Research Brief Library

New machinery raises demand for workers with STEM degrees, though not at the firms purchasing the machinery, but instead at the outside suppliers that install, integrate, and service the machines.

Between 2019 and 2021, a nationwide increase in gun homicides pushed the U.S. murder rate up by a third, before it fell almost as quickly. This COVID-era swing has been hard to explain because it defies the canonical economic model...

Educational materials can help children learn about emotions, but textbooks and children’s books present emotions differently in words and images. While the text includes a wide range of emotions, images overwhelmingly show happiness and calm, and demand for positive imagery...

Why Latin America Grows Slowly

Student loan borrowers who were more optimistic that their loans would be forgiven under the plan announced in August 2022 increased their routine spending by roughly $80 per month, and those who expected the COVID-era pause to be extended again...

Competition among firms developing artificial general intelligence can encourage them to prioritize speed over safety, increasing the risk of a catastrophic outcome. Industry consolidation, regulation facilitating commitment to slow down, and governments entering the race in a safe way improves...

  What Is the AMOC?  The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) carries warm, salty surface water from the subtropics toward the North Atlantic, where the water cools, sinks, and flows back south. The delivery of warm water north helps keep...

Receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) in childhood increases children’s earnings in adulthood when parents continue working (and therefore total household income increases), but has zero or negative effects when parents offset the transfer by reducing their earnings. This suggests that...

Residential-commercial zoning in American cities increases neighborhood specialization and reduces resident welfare. The dominant effect of zoning is not to correct externalities—whether the negative spillovers (noise, congestion, pollution) of the traditional Euclidean view, or the positive spillovers from mixing that...

Proposed mergers rarely offer both large efficiency gains and large market power gains, because either alone is enough to make a deal worth pursuing for firms. This negative relationship is due to the nature of selection into mergers and has...