The Affordable Care Act (ACA) represents the largest reform to the U.S. health care system since the 1965 introduction of Medicare and Medicaid. Questions arise as to the possible effects of this significant health care change on the labor market behavior of near-elderly workers (workers aged 59 to 64, who are not yet eligible for Medicare). This grant supports a study by Mark Duggan and his colleague Gopi Shah Goda that examines the likely effects of the ACA on labor outcomes for these near elderly. Duggan and Goda will address several questions about the ACA, including how the ACA affects the employment, labor force participation, self-employment, wages, hours of work, and related labor market outcomes of older workers; which provisions of the ACA contribute to the estimated effects; and how these effects vary over time and by gender, race, ethnicity, marital status, educational attainment, and health.

This grant provides continued support for a program at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama (CMU) that exposes top dramatic writing students to science and technology and awards prizes to student screenwriters who write science- or technology-themed scripts. The CMU program includes a fall symposium that brings scientists to the drama school to introduce students to recent developments in a variety of scientific disciplines; a year-long screenwriting workshop that meets weekly and focuses on the challenges and opportunities posed by incorporating science into dramatic or comedic narratives, a mentorship program that pairs film students with working scientists to help them depict science accurately in their work, an annual screenwriting competition that awards $17,500 to the two best science-themed scripts submitted, and yearly showcases in Los Angeles and New York that bring student filmmakers into contact with leading producers, directors, and distributors in the film and television industry. Grant funds provide core support for these activities for another two years.

Funds from this grant provide three years of support to the Boston College Center on Aging & Work for the operation and expansion of a multidisciplinary research network that links together scholars working on issues related to the aging work force. To date, nearly 90 scholars from 15 disciplines across 14 countries have joined the network, sharing the latest news, research results, data, and ideas for further scholarship. Grant funds will support expansion of the network’s membership to 150 members globally, a survey to track member priorities, the launch of a summer research institute in 2016, a one-day member conference to be held at the annual meeting of the 2017 Gerontological Society of America, and the development of a long-term sustainability plan for the network.

The grant provides two years of continued support for a partnership with the Tribeca Film Institute in its continuing efforts to highlight excellent high-quality narrative films with scientific and technological themes. The TFI/Sloan Filmmaker Fund supports science-themed film projects in a wide variety of ways, giving grants of between $15,000 and $25,000 for screenplay development, optioning of literary material for adaption, and preproduction expenses like casting or location scouting. Additional postproduction grants are also available for science-themed projects, including funds for sound editing, negative cutting, and printmaking.  In addition to grants to offset pre- and postproduction expenses, supported filmmakers receive help from scientific and industry advisors, to shepherd the project through production, and are mentored by TFI’s insiders. In addition to the TFI Filmmaker Fund, TFI hosts several science-themed events at the annual Tribeca Film Festival, including a staged reading of screenplays by supported artists, a retrospective screening of a classic science-themed movie and panel discussion of the film by scientists and industry professionals, and an industry reception that brings supported filmmakers together with leading Hollywood executives and distributors.

Funds from this grant provide two years of continued support for the Sundance Institute to promote the production and distribution of high-quality narrative films with scientific or technological themes or characters. The Institute’s efforts, which are primarily centered around the influential Sundance Film Festival, include five separate components: A commissioning fellowship of $25,000 to the screenwriter of a promising early-stage film project to be used to help usher the script toward production. An episodic story fellowship of $10,000 to the scriptwriter of a promising early-stage television project to be used to help usher the project toward completion. A lab fellowship, which allows the director of a science-themed film project to participate in the Sundance Film Festival’s prestigious production lab for up and coming filmmakers. A feature film prize, awarded annually at the Sundance Film Festival for the best science or technology themed film submitted to the festival. A Science-in-Film forum held annually at the Sundance Film Festival that brings independent filmmakers together with working scientists in a moderated panel discussion about the opportunities and challenges posed by incorporating scientific and technological themes into narrative storytelling. Fellowships include year-long support from the Sundance Institute, as well as dedicated stipends to enable filmmakers to hire scientific advisors for their projects.

A number of economic studies have found that workers with access to private retiree health insurance are much more likely to retire than are their counterparts without such access who must rely entirely on Medicare. This grant to the Urban Institute supports a project that looks at the relationship between health insurance and decisions to extend work lives or to retire. Drawing on data from physician and household surveys, this project will address a number of important issues, including recent trends in physicians’ acceptance of Medicare patients, how Medicare beneficiaries’ access to care differs from those with private insurance, how these differences correlate with various factors like physician specialty, and whether these differences affect retirement decisions. Findings will shed important new light on the relative attractiveness of Medicare relative to private health insurance and the extent to which that comparison affects the exit of older workers from the labor market.

Independent and arthouse cinemas participating in the Science on Screen program pair screenings of classic, cult, or documentary films with lively introductions by working scientists who discuss ways in which the film touches on science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.  Past offerings have included a screening of the 1980s slapstick comedy Airplane! paired with a discussion of automation in aviation, a screening of Fight Club paired with a discussion of the psychology of aggression, and a screening of Soylent Green paired with a discussion of the future of the global food supply. The program is headed by Cambridge’s Coolidge Corner Theater (CCT), which promotes the program within the arthouse cinema community, makes suggestions for entertaining film/discussion pairings, and administers small grants to participating theaters to promote screenings and recruit local scientists. In addition, CCT organizes a national “Science on Screen day” when all participating theaters hold coordinated screenings, and gives an annual presentation at the Arthouse Convergence, an industry gathering of more than 600 arthouse and independent cinemas. Funds from this grant provide two years of continued support for the Science on Screen program, including funds to expand the number of participating theaters and improve the program’s web presence.

This grant funds efforts by Allessandro Acquisti at Carnegie Mellon University to examine, through laboratory, online, and field experiments, how Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) can affect consumer behavior and welfare. Examples of PET tools include ad blockers like Ghostery, surveillance blockers like Tor, and cookie blockers like Beef Taco. Acquisti and his team will have PET software installed on the computers of some experimental subjects and then observe how their online behavior changes relative to a control group. They will then measure and analyze the subsequent differences in consumer behavior, like purchases or sites visited, as well as changes in the prices, products, or search results offered by websites and search engines to the two groups. The work promises to provide valuable new data on how concerns about privacy shape the way we conduct our lives online.

This grant funds research by University of Michigan economist and professor of education Brian Jacob, who has designed a randomized controlled trial to study the effects of behavioral interventions on enrollment in the Teacher Loan Forgiveness (TLF) program. The TLF is a federal initiative that forgives up to $17,500 in student loans to teachers who teach for five years in a school serving students from low-income families.  The complicated, multistage qualification process for the program offers a unique opportunity to test how various interventions might work, by randomly assigning applicants to different groups during the process and subjecting them to slightly different form designs, requirements, defaults, and choice architectures. The TLF thus serves as an excellent opportunity to study how to design federal benefits programs in ways that maximize their uptake. Funds from this grant will support Jacob and his research team as they conduct this two-year study.

Behavioral economists tout examples of how small changes in the way options are presented can have large effects on the decisions people make. The term “nudging” refers to such “choice architecture” modifications that help, but do not force, people to behave more in line with how they wish they could. To count as a nudge, the behavioral intervention should be easy and inexpensive to disregard. So, for example, putting fruit at eye level is a nudge; banning junk food is not. Large-scale experiments, both by academics and by governments, have shown that nudging can help people eat better, reduce their energy consumption, or save more for retirement. These are relatively straightforward applications, though. Others raise harder questions about who ultimately benefits, who loses, and by how much. For example, do people like being nudged? Should people like being nudged? All things considered, when does nudging actually make society better off? Does it matter much if people know they are being nudged? This grant funds a series of experiments by University of Chicago economist John List to examine these and related issues. List’s team has designed two large randomized controlled trials with almost 50,000 subjects in total, one focused on energy conservation and another on food choices. Along with measuring the direct effects of nudges, List will rigorously examine participants’ decisions to opt in or out of being nudged, allowing him to estimate any associated welfare losses experienced by consumers.