The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth
Conference on Measuring and Understanding the Distribution and Intra/Inter-Generational Mobility of Income and Wealth
Economics of Digitization

An NBER conference on The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth took place in Mountain View, California, January 7–8. Research Associates Aaron Chatterji of Duke University, Josh Lerner of Harvard University, and Scott Stern of MIT, and Michael J. Andrews of NBER organized the meeting, which was sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. These researchers’ papers were presented and discussed:

Erica Fuchs, Carnegie Mellon University and NBER; Kate S. Whitefoot and Christophe B. Combemale, Carnegie Mellon University; and Britta M. Glennon, University of Pennsylvania, "The ‘Weighty' Manufacturing Sector: Transforming Raw Materials into Physical Goods"

Joel Waldfogel, University of Minnesota and NBER, "Digitization and the Welfare Benefits of New Products in Music, Movies, and Books"

Joshua R. Bruce, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and John M. de Figueiredo, Duke University and NBER, "Innovation in the US Federal Government"

Francine Lafontaine and Jagadeesh Sivadasan, University of Michigan, "The Recent Evolution of Physical Retail Markets: Online Retailing, Big Box Stores, and the Rise of Restaurants"

Chris Forman, Cornell University, and Avi Goldfarb, University of Toronto and NBER, "Agglomeration and Scaling in IT Entrepreneurship: Evidence from First-Time Patenters"

Edward Kung, California State University, Northridge, "Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Housing and Real Estate"

David Popp, Syracuse University and NBER; Jacquelyn Pless, MIT; and Ivan Hascic and Nick Johnstone, OECD, "Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Energy Sector"

Derrick Choe and Robert Seamans, New York University, and Alexander Oettl, Georgia Institute of Technology and NBER, "What's Driving Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Transportation Sector?"

Mercedes Delgado, MIT; Daniel Kim, University of Pennsylvania; and Karen G. Mills, Harvard University, "The Servicification of the US Economy: The Role of Startups versus Incumbent Firms"

Barbara Biasi, Yale University and NBER; David J. Deming, Harvard University and NBER; and Petra Moser, New York University and NBER, "Education and Innovation"

Julian Alston, University of California, Davis, and Phillip Pardey, University of Minnesota, "Innovation, Growth and Structural Change in American Agriculture"

Amitabh Chandra, Harvard University and NBER, "Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Health Care"

Summaries of these papers are at www.nber.org/conferences/2020/RIEs20/summary.html

An NBER conference on Measuring and Understanding the Distribution and Intra/Inter-Generational Mobility of Income and Wealth took place in Bethesda, Maryland, March 5–6. Program Director Raj Chetty of Harvard University, Research Associate John N. Friedman of Brown University, Janet C. Gornick of The City University of New York, Barry Johnson of the Internal Revenue Service, and Arthur Kennickell of Stone Center, CUNY Graduate Center, organized the meeting, which was sponsored by the Stone Center for Socio-Economic Inequality at CUNY, the Stone Project for Wealth and Income Inequality at Brown University, and Opportunity Insights. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Dennis Fixler and Marina Gindelsky, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and David Johnson, University of Michigan, "Distributing Personal Income: Trends Over Time"

Patrick Langetieg, Mark Payne, and Alan Plumley, Internal Revenue Service; Carla Medalia, US Census Bureau; Bruce D. Meyer, University of Chicago and NBER; and Derek Wu and Grace Finley, University of Chicago, "The Receipt and Distributional Effects of Transfers and Tax Credits Using the Comprehensive Income Dataset"

John Guyton and Patrick Langetieg, Internal Revenue Service; Daniel Reck, London School of Economics; Max Risch, University of Michigan; and Gabriel Zucman, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Tax Evasion by the Wealthy: Measurement and Implications"

Richard P. Tonkin, Sean White, Sofiya Stoyanova, Aly Youssef, Sunny Sidhu, and Chris S. Payne, UK Office for National Statistics, "Developing Indicators of Inequality and Poverty Consistent with National Accounts"

Dominic Webber, Richard P. Tonkin, and Martin Shine, UK Office for National Statistics, "Using Tax Data to Better Capture Top Incomes in Official UK Inequality Statistics"

Stefan Bach and Charlotte Bartels, DIW Berlin (the German Institute for Economic Research), and Theresa Neef, Freie Universität Berlin, "Distributional National Accounts: A Macro-Micro Approach to Inequality in Germany"

Marie Connolly and Catherine Haeck, Université du Québec à Montréal, and Jean-William P. Laliberté, University of Calgary, "Parental Education Mitigates the Rising Transmission of Income between Generations"

Victoria L. Bryant, Internal Revenue Service; Anne-Line Koch Helsø, University of Copenhagen; and Pablo Mitnik, Stanford University, "Inequality of Opportunity for Income in Denmark and the United States: A Comparison Based on Administrative Data"

Janet C. Gornick, Branko Milanovic, and Nathaniel Johnson, City University of New York, "American Exceptionalism in Market Income Inequality: Inequality across Household Types"

Isabel Z. Martinez, Universität St. Gallen, "In It Together? Inequality and the Joint Distribution of Income and Wealth in Switzerland"

Jonathan D. Fisher, Stanford University, and David Johnson, University of Michigan, "Inequality and Mobility over the Past Half Century Using Income, Consumption and Wealth"

William Gale, Brookings Institution, and Benjamin Harris, Northwestern University, "Changing Wealth Accumulation Patterns: Evidence and Determinants"

Sarah K. Bruch, University of Delaware, and Janet C. Gornick and Joseph van der Naald, City University of New York, "Geographic Inequality in Social Provision and Redistribution in the US States 1994–2018"

Paolo Acciari, Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance; Facundo Alvaredo, Paris School of Economics; and Salvatore Morelli, City University of New York, "The Concentration of Personal Wealth in Italy: 1995–2016"

Jeff Larrimore, Federal Reserve Board, and Jake Mortenson and David Splinter, Joint Committee on Taxation, "Presence and Persistence of Poverty in US Tax Data"

Bertrand Garbinti, Banque de France and CREST (Center for Research in Economics and Statistics), and Frédérique Savignac, Banque de France, "Intergenerational Wealth Mobility in France over the 20th Century"

Randall Akee, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER; Maggie R. Jones, US Census Bureau; and Emilia Simeonova, Johns Hopkins University and NBER, "The EITC and Intergenerational Income Mobility"

John Sabelhaus, University of Maryland, and Alice Henriques Volz, Federal Reserve Board, "Social Security Wealth, Inequality, and Lifecycle Saving"

Pirmin Fessler and Martin Schürz, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, "Structuring the Analysis of Wealth Inequality Using the Functions of Wealth: A Class-Based Approach"

Michael Batty, Jesse Bricker, Joseph S. Briggs, Sarah Friedman, Danielle Nemschoff, Eric Nielsen, Kamila Sommer, and Alice Henriques Volz, Federal Reserve Board, "The Distributional Financial Accounts of the United States"

John M. Abowd and Kevin McKinney, US Census Bureau, and John Sabelhaus, University of Maryland, "United States Earnings Dynamics: Inequality, Mobility, and Volatility"

John C. Haltiwanger, University of Maryland and NBER, and James Spletzer, US Census Bureau, "Rising Between Firm Inequality and Declining Labor Market Fluidity: Evidence of a Changing Job Ladder"

Sam E. Asher, Johns Hopkins University; Paul Novosad, Dartmouth College; and Charlie Rafkin, MIT, "Comparing Intergenerational Income and Educational Mobility for Racial Groups in the US"

Facundo Alvaredo, Paris School of Economics; Yonatan Berman, London Mathematical Laboratory; and Salvatore Morelli, City University of New York, "On the Distribution of Estates and the Distribution of Wealth: Evidence from the Dead"

Merike Kukk, Tallinn University of Technology and Bank of Estonia, and Jaanika Meriküll and Tairi Rõõm, Bank of Estonia, "What Explains the Gender Gap in Wealth? Evidence from Administrative Data"

James J. Feigenbaum, Boston University and NBER; Price V. Fishback, University of Arizona and NBER; and Keoka Grayson, Hobart and William Smith College, "Inequality and the Safety Net Throughout the Income Distribution, 1929–40"

Summaries of these papers are at www.nber.org/conferences/2020/CRIWs20/summary.html

An NBER conference on the Economics of Digitization took place at Stanford University on March 6. Research Associate Joel Waldfogel of the University of Minnesota, Faculty Research Fellow Michael Luca of Harvard University, and Research Associate Shane Greenstein of Harvard University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Zach Y. Brown, University of Michigan, and Alexander MacKay, Harvard University, "Competition in Pricing Algorithms"

Milan Miric and Pai-Ling Yin, University of Southern California, "Population-Level Evidence of the Gender Gap in Technology Entrepreneurship"

Joerg Claussen, University of Munich; Christian W. Peukert, UCP Católica-Lisbon; and Ananya Sen, Carnegie Mellon University, "The Editor vs. the Algorithm: Returns to Data and Externalities in Online News"

Leif Brandes, University of Lucerne; David Godes, University of Maryland; and Dina Mayzlin, University of Southern California, "What Drives Extremity Bias in Online Reviews? Theory and Experimental Evidence"

Nicole Immorlica and Glen Weyl, Microsoft Research, and Matthew Jackson, Stanford University, "Verifying Identity as a Social Intersection"

M. Keith Chen and Peter E. Rossi, University of California, Los Angeles; Judith A. Chevalier, Yale University and NBER; and Lindsey Currier, University of Chicago, "Suppliers and Demanders of Flexibility: The Demographics of Gig Work"

Mohammed Alyakoob, University of Southern California, and Mohammad S. Rahman, Purdue University, "Shared Prosperity (or Lack Thereof) in the Sharing Economy"

Summaries of these papers are at www.nber.org/conferences/2020/EoDs20/summary.html