The NBER Reporter 2015 Number 4: Conferences

Tax Policy and the Economy
Education, Skills, and Technical Change: Implications for Future U.S. GDP Growth
Firms and the Distribution of Income: The Roles of Productivity and Luck
Lessons from the Crisis for Macroeconomics

Tax Policy and the Economy

An NBER conference, "Tax Policy and the Economy," took place in Washington, D.C., on September 24. Research Associate Jeffrey Brown of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

    Gerald Carlino, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and Robert P. Inman, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Fiscal Stimulus in Economic Unions: What Role for States?" (NBER Working Paper No. 21680)

    Nathaniel Hendren, Harvard University and NBER, "The Policy Elasticity" (NBER Working Paper No. 19177)

    Michael Cooper, John McClelland, James Pearce, Richard Prisinzano, and Joseph Sullivan, Department of the Treasury; Danny Yagan, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER; and Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick, University of Chicago and NBER, "Business in the United States: Who Owns it and How Much Tax Do They Pay?" (NBER Working Paper No. 21651)

    Michael Chirico, Charles Loeffler, and John MacDonald, University of Pennsylvania, and Robert P. Inman and Holger Sieg, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "An Experimental Evaluation of Notification Strategies to Increase Property Tax Compliance: Free-Riding in the City of Brotherly Love"

    Jeffrey Clemens, University of California, San Diego, and NBER, "Redistribution through Minimum Wage Regulation: An Analysis of Program Linkages and Budgetary Spillovers"

    Severin Borenstein and Lucas W. Davis, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER, "The Distributional Effects of U.S. Clean Energy Tax Credits" (NBER Working Paper No. 21437)

Summaries of these papers are at: http://www.nber.org/confer/2015/TPE15/summary.html

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Education, Skills, and Technical Change: Implications for Future U.S. GDP Growth

The NBER hosted a Conference on Research in Income and Wealth (CRIW) meeting, "Education, Skills, and Technical Change: Implications for Future U.S. GDP Growth," in Bethesda, MD, on October 16–17. Research Associates Charles Hulten of University of Maryland and Valerie Ramey of University of California, San Diego, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

    Charles R. Hulten and Valerie Ramey, "Skills, Education, and U.S. Economic Growth: Are U.S. Workers Being Adequately Prepared for the 21st Century World of Work?"

    Canyon L. Bosler, Mary Daly, and John Fernald, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Bart Hobijn, Arizona State University, "The Outlook for U.S. Labor Quality Growth"

    Dale Jorgenson, Harvard University; Mun Ho, Resources for the Future; and Jon Samuels, Bureau of Economic Analysis, "Education, Participation, and the Revival of U.S. Economic Growth"

    Jaison Abel and Richard Deitz, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, "Underemployment in the Early Careers of College Graduates Following the Great Recession"

    Maury Gittleman, Kristen Monaco, and Nicole Nestoriak, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "The Requirements of Jobs: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Survey"

    Shelly Lundberg, University of California, Santa Barbara, "Non-Cognitive Skills as Human Capital"

    Stijn Broecke and Glenda Quintini, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Marieke Vandeweyer, University of Leuven, "Wage Inequality and Cognitive Skills: Re-Opening the Debate"

    Robert G. Valletta, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, "Recent Flattening in the Higher Education Wage Pre-mium: Polarization, Deskilling, or Both?"

    Gordon Hanson, University of California, San Diego, and NBER, and Matthew J. Slaughter, Dartmouth College and NBER, "High-Skilled Immigration and the Rise of STEM Occupations in U.S. Employment"

    Caroline Hoxby, Stanford University and NBER, "Online Education, Labor Productivity, and Technological Innovation"

    Grey Gordon, Indiana University, and Aaron Hedlund, University of Missouri, "Accounting for the Rise in College Tuition"

    Edward Wolff, New York University and NBER, "School Spending and Student Performance in OECD Countries, 1998–2011"

Summaries of these papers are at: http://www.nber.org/confer/2015/CRIWf15/summary.html

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Firms and the Distribution of Income: The Roles of Productivity and Luck

An NBER conference, "How do Firms Affect the Distribution of Income? The Roles of Productivity and Luck," took place in Palo Alto on November 13–14. Labor Studies Program Director David Card of University of California, Berkeley, and Research Associates Edward Lazear and Kathryn Shaw of Stanford University, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

    Erling Barth, Institute for Social Research and NBER; James Davis, Bureau of the Census; and Richard B. Freeman, Harvard University and NBER, "Augmenting the Human Capital Earnings Equation with Measures of Where People Work"

    John Haltiwanger, University of Maryland and NBER, and Henry R. Hyatt and Erika McEntarfer, Bureau of the Census, "Do Workers Move Up the Firm Productivity Job Ladder?"

    Chinhui Juhn, University of Houston and NBER; Kristin McCue and Holly Monti, Bureau of the Census; and Brooks Pierce, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Firm Performance and the Volatility of Worker Earnings"

    Edward Lazear and Kathryn Shaw, Stanford University and NBER, and Christopher Stanton, Harvard University and NBER, "Who Gets Hired? The Importance of Finding an Open Slot"

    David Card and Patrick Kline, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER; Ana Rute Cardoso, Institute for Economic Analysis (Barcelona); and Jörg Heining, Institute for Employment Research (Nuremberg), "Firms and Labor Market Inequality: A Review"

    John M. Abowd, Cornell University and NBER; Kevin L. McKinney, Bureau of the Census; and Nellie Zhao, Cornell University, "Earnings Inequality Trends in the United States: Nationally Representative Estimates from Longitudinally Linked Employer-Employee Data"

    Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT and NBER, and Heekyung Kim and Guillaume Saint-Jacques, MIT, "CEO Pay and Information Technology"

    Jae Song, Social Security Administration; David Price and Nicholas Bloom, Stanford University and NBER; Fatih Guvenen, University of Minnesota and NBER; and Till von Wachter, University of California, Los Angeles, and NBER, "Firming Up Inequality" (NBER Working Paper No. 21199)

    Stefan Bender, Deutsche Bundesbank; Nicholas Bloom; David Card; John Van Reenen, London School of Economics and NBER; and Stefanie Wolter, Institute for Employment Research (Nuremberg), "Of Managers and Management: Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data"

    David Deming, Harvard University and NBER, and Lisa Kahn, Yale University and NBER, "Firm Heterogeneity in Skill Demands"

Summaries of these papers are at: http://www.nber.org/confer/2015/PERf15/summary.html

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Lessons from the Crisis for Macroeconomics

An NBER conference, "Lessons from the Crisis for Macroeconomics," took place in New York on December 4. Research Associates Virgiliu Midrigan and Thomas Philippon of New York University organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

    Julian Kozlowski, New York University, and Laura Veldkamp and Venky Venkateswaran, New York University and NBER, "The Tail that Wags the Economy: Belief-Driven Business Cycles and Persistent Stagnation" (NBER Working Paper No. 21719)

    David Berger and Guido Lorenzoni, Northwestern University and NBER, and Veronica Guerrieri and Joseph Vavra, University of Chicago and NBER, "House Prices and Consumer Spending" (NBER Working Paper No. 21667)

    Christopher House and Linda Tesar, University of Michigan and NBER, and Christian Pröbsting, University of Michigan, "Austerity in the Aftermath of the Great Recession"

    Atif Mian, Princeton University and NBER; Amir Sufi, University of Chicago and NBER; and Emil Verner, Princeton University, "Household Debt and Business Cycles Worldwide" (NBER Working Paper No. 21581)

    Òscar Jordà, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; Moritz Schularick, University of Bonn; and Alan Taylor, University of California, Davis, and NBER, "Leveraged Bubbles" (NBER Working Paper No. 21486)

    Danny Yagan, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER, "Moving to Opportunity? Migratory Insurance over the Great Recession"

    Robert Hall, Stanford University and NBER, "Macroeconomics of Persistent Slumps"

Summaries of these papers are at: http://www.nber.org/confer/2015/LCMf15/summary.html

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