We build and analyze new metrics of digital usage that leverage telemetry data collected by Microsoft during operating system updates across forty million Windows devices in U.S. households. These measures of US household digital usage are much more comprehensive than those made available...

In recent years, voter ID laws and convenience voting have generated heated partisan debates. To shed light on these policy issues, we survey the recent evidence on the institutional determinants and effects of voter turnout and broaden the perspective beyond the most debated rules. We begin by...

Analyzing millions of patents granted by the USPTO between 1976 and 2020, we find a pattern where specific patents only rise to prominence after considerable time has passed. Amongst these late-blooming influential patents, we show that there are key players (patent hunters) who consistently...

We study whether the sensitivity of economic, health, and livelihood outcomes to climate extremes has declined over the last half century, consistent with adaptation. Understanding whether such adaptation is already occurring is central to anticipating future climate damages, to calibrating the...

This paper assesses the impact of adopting a post-grant review institution in the US patent system by comparing the 'opposition careers' of European Patent Office (EPO) equivalents of litigated US patents to those of a control group of EPO patents. We demonstrate several novel methods of...

With restricted-use data from the U.S. Census Bureau, I conduct an analysis of the macro- and micro-economic determinants of marrying. Based on observations across a broad segment of calendar years (from 1978 to 2010), I examine the measures of the national unemployment rate for males, national...

We formulate a model to explain why the lack of political competition may stifle economic performance and use the United States as a testing ground for the model’s predictions, exploiting the 1965 Voting Rights Act which helped break the near monpoly on political power of the Democrats in...

Aiming to further explore possible underlying causes for the recent stagnation in American heights, this paper describes the result of analysis of the commercial U.S. Sizing Survey. Using zip codes available in the data set, we consider geographic correlates of height such as local poverty rate,...