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The Digest

Retirees Relocate for Income Tax Exemptions
Article
 In 2013, the Portuguese government offered foreign retirees relocating to Portugal a 10-year tax exemption on their foreign-source pension income, provided their country of origin had a tax treaty with Portugal. As the number of immigrant retirees grew, the amount of forgone income taxes grew, reaching €1.5 billion, or about 0.6 percent of GDP, by 2021. In that year, the tax exemption was replaced by a 10 percent rate. In 2024, the exemption was repealed.In Pensioners...

International Holdings and Hedging of USD-Denominated Assets
Article
 Foreign investors’ demand for US dollar (USD) denominated securities and their currency hedging activities are important for analyzing international capital flows, exchange rates, and the dollar’s global dominance. In Dollar Asset Holdings and Hedging Around the Globe (NBER Working Paper 32453), Wenxin Du and Amy W. Huber combine information from a range of disparate data sources — industry filings, company reports, and national statistics from many nations — to...

The Reporter

Lessons for Economists from the Pandemic
Article
Author(s): Cecilia E. Rouse
It is an honor to be here today; I owe my love of economics to the Bureau as well as my many friends and colleagues. Marty [Martin] Feldstein was one of the people who made it such a special place. I enjoyed seeing him around the Bureau, learning public finance from him, and briefly serving as his research assistant. I’d sit in his office, in awe of his incredible intellect and economic insights, and be completely distracted by the hilarious cartoons he had framed...

Understanding Early Childhood Development and Its Importance
Article
Author(s): Orazio Attanasio
In the process of human development, what happens in the early years — including the first thousand days after conception — is of key importance for determining life-cycle outcomes. Early outcomes, however, are not fixed at birth or determined exclusively by genetics; they are influenced by a variety of factors, including parental behaviors, the environments children live in, and policy interventions. Furthermore, human development is a multidimensional process, with...

The Bulletin on Retirement & Disability

Health Inequality and Economic Disparities by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender
Article
In Health Inequality and Economic Disparities by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender (NBER Working Paper 32971 an earlier version, NBER RDRC Paper NB23-11), Nicolò Russo, Rory McGee, Mariacristina De Nardi, Margherita Borella, and Ross Abram use data from the Health and Retirement Study over the period 1996–2018 to evaluate measures of health inequality in middle age and the consequences of such health disparities. At age 55, Black men and women...

Disability Benefits, Aggregate Economic Conditions, and Earnings
Article
 In How Do Economic Conditions Affect Earnings and Return to Disability Programs for Beneficiaries Whose Benefits Were Terminated? (NBER RDRC Paper NB22-03), Jeffrey Hemmeter, Kathleen Mullen, and Stephanie Rennane find that individuals whose benefits end due to medical improvement during an economic downturn earn less in the short run and are more likely to reapply for benefits within five years than those whose benefits end during stronger...

The Bulletin on Health

How Health Disparities Develop over the Lifecycle
Article
In the Netherlands, there are striking socioeconomic differences in mortality among older adults, with a 4.4 percentage point (67 percent) higher five-year mortality rate for 70-year-old individuals with below-median income than for those with above-median income. To better understand the role of chronic disease in these health disparities, Kaveh Danesh, Jonathan T. Kolstad, William D. Parker, and Johannes Spinnewijn develop an index of chronic disease burden in The Chronic...

Health Consequences of Wildfire Smoke
Article
Tiny, inhalable particles known as fine particulate matter (PM2.5) are a primary component of wildfire smoke and are detrimental to human health. Since smoke can drift hundreds of miles from its source, exposure to these pollutants is widespread: wildfire smoke accounts for about 18 percent of the ambient PM2.5 concentrations affecting the US population. In The Nonlinear Effects of Air Pollution on Health: Evidence from Wildfire Smoke (NBER Working Paper 32924), Nolan H...

The Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

“Third Places” Boost Local Economic Activity
Article
 Sociologists have argued that “third places” like cafés, which provide opportunities for individuals to socialize and exchange ideas outside of home and work, improve neighborhood life. But what about the relationship between such places and economic activity? In Third Places and Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Starbucks Cafés (NBER Working Paper 32604), researchers Jinkyong Choi, Jorge Guzman, and Mario L. Small use data on US business...

Stock Market Wealth and Entrepreneurship
Article
 In Stock Market Wealth and Entrepreneurship (NBER Working Paper 32643), Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Plamen T. Nenov, Vitor Santos, and Alp Simsek evaluate the relationship between the performance of a household’s stock market portfolio and the likelihood that someone in that household launches an entrepreneurial venture. They analyze administrative data from Norway’s shareholder register and compute the holdings of every Norwegian household in all...