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Recent decades of both low unemployment and low inflation in the United States have led to discussion of whether the relationship between the two embodied in the Phillips curve remains valid. An analysis featured in the current issue of The NBER Digest suggests that inflation could rise if the labor market, which is near record lows, overheats. Other studies in this edition of the free, monthly Digest analyze returns from U.S. government programs, document reduction in the percentage of black teachers in Southern schools that desegregated, and gauge the influence of early-career research experience, and show that borrowers who are aware of their FICO scores are less likely to be overdue on loan payments, and measure the impacts of R&D tax credits.

Edward Miguel of the University of California, Berkeley and the NBER presented the 2019 NBER Summer Institute Methodology Lecture on "Research Transparency and Reproducibility." He described the importance of ensuring that researchers can replicate, and build on, empirical research findings, and summarized a number of emerging practices that are designed to facilitate reproducibility. The full presentation and accompanying slides are available to download free.

The summer issue of the Bulletin on Health features a study of the distributional impact of penicillin's introduction on mortality in Italy following World War II. Researchers find that mortality rates for penicillin-sensitive causes of death fell by 58 percent, relative to the mean in earlier years. Furthermore, penicillin’s introduction reduced the dispersion of penicillin-sensitive mortality rates across regions by 68 percent, explaining 40 percent of all-cause convergence over this period. Also featured in the summer issue of the Bulletin on Health are studies of the effects of heating costs on winter deaths, and the effects of California’s change in vaccine laws on vaccination and medical exemption rates.

In 2015, the Social Security program paid over $95 billion in survivors benefits to 4.2 million surviving spouses. Research that is the first to explore the protective role of survivors benefit receipt against the short-run financial consequences of a spousal death finds that attaining benefit eligibility is associated with a 34-percentage point increase in Social Security receipt and a 3.1-percentage point decline in labor force participation. Also summarized in this first issue of the free Bulletin on Retirement and Disability: research that estimates the total value of Great Recession-induced disability insurance (DI) awards and a study of the effects of DI awards on the financial outcomes of applicants.