The Regulation of Occupations
The issue of occupational regulation has been of academic interest from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman (Friedman 1962; Smith 1937). In Western democracies, the number of workers who are required [...]
Asset Price Bubbles and Systemic Risk
We analyze the relationship between asset price bubbles and systemic risk, using bank-level data covering almost thirty years. Systemic risk of banks rises already during a bubble’s build-up phase, and [...]
Shadow Banking and Financial Regulation
The so-called “shadow banking” system arose over recent decades and achieved full bloom just prior to the recent financial crisis. That system proved unstable. And the shadow banking system was [...]
Improving America’s Housing, 2019
The U.S. market for home improvement and repair is now well over $400 billion annually as the housing stock faces pressure to meet the nation's growing and changing housing needs. [...]
Health Care Spending in the United States Compared With 10 Other High-Income Countries
In this issue of JAMA, Papanicolas and colleagues compared health care spending in the United States with health care spending in a select group of 10 of the highest-income countries [...]
Homelessness and Housing Market Regulation
This chapter explores the potential importance of local housing market regulation in determining homelessness in the U.S. I begin with a theoretical discussion of the connection between the operation of [...]
Debt Relief and Slow Recovery: A Decade After Lehman
We follow a representative panel of millions of consumers in the U.S. from 2007 to 2017 and document several facts on the long-term effects of the Great Recession. There were [...]
Crowdfunding money for research levels the playing field
Digital crowdfunding platforms that raise money directly from citizens have created an alternative source of research funding. This column analyses data from the largest science crowdfunding platform, Experiment.com. It finds [...]
Job Market Signaling through Occupational Licensing
A large literature demonstrates that occupational licensing is a labor market friction that distorts labor supply allocation and prices. We show that an occupational license serves as a job market [...]
Annual Intellectual Property Report to Congress
This paper studies the effects of the USPTO's patent secrecy program in World War II, under which approximately 11,200 U.S. patent applications were issued secrecy orders which halted examination and [...]