Research Brief Library

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 Western...

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...

Some states govern effectively despite lacking the fiscal resources to fund a modern bureaucracy. This is true of the developing world today, but also historically of currently developed countries. Using a unique survey of English urban government from 1835, the...

College-educated mothers spend more time on learning activities with their children despite reporting substantially lower enjoyment of those activities. This enjoyment paradox is sharpest among non-employed, higher-income college-educated mothers.

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...