The "Energy Efficiency Paradox" refers to the stubborn fact that energy efficiency improvements judged cost effective in theory nevertheless fail to find wide adoption in practice. Surprisingly few people, for example, weatherize their homes even when given all sorts of information and incentives. Though many researchers have studied aspects of the paradox, no serious, concerted research initiative to understand it has been conducted. Funds from this grant support the efforts of Elizabeth Bailey at the University of California, Berkeley to convene a working group to recruit and resource coordinated research projects that can help resolve the Energy Efficiency Paradox. Funded activities include efforts to build an active community of economists, engineers, and behavioral scientists to conduct coordinated research in cooperation with business owners, investors, consumers, utility officials, energy entrepreneurs, and public policymakers. The Bailey working group will seek financial support for energy efficiency research and provide support resources to associated researchers, including setting methodological and metadata standards, facilitating data access, and supporting archiving infrastructure.

Lack of confidence about the future of Social Security has led many Americans mistakenly to believe that they had better file for Social Security benefits as soon as they are eligible (typically when they turn 62), so they can lock in their benefits before Social Security "is gone." Yet Social Security's finances are more secure than most Americans think, and analysis shows that for the typical American it is economically advantageous to start taking benefits no earlier than full retirement age (now 66) and in many cases to delay taking benefits until age 70. To help American workers make retirement decisions based on accurate information, it is imperative to both clarify the future of Social Security's finances and its capacity to meet future benefit commitments and to communicate the advantages of delaying benefits. Funds from this grant support a project by the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) to design and execute an integrated public education initiative aimed at helping middle- and lower-income Americans understand how they can enhance their long-term retirement security by working longer and delaying receipt of Social Security benefits. NASI will produce a series of accurate, high-quality written, visual, and graphic materials accessible to the public that will lay out the economic advantages of working longer and delaying Social Security and combat commonly held misconceptions about the economics of retirement. Based on the most up-to-date research, the materials will then be disseminated to the public through financial planners, HR professionals, journalists, and non-profit community-based grassroots organizations.

The Affordable Care Act presents a special opportunity to research how different choice architectures affect consumer choice in a comprehensive manner. At least 15 states plan to design their own exchanges, which are expected to vary significantly. Even exchanges that adopt the federal template will operate with different participating insurers, plans offered, and price controls or other state regulations. Thousands of individuals will purchase plans off the exchanges, opting for one of a set of plans offered. Funds from this grant support a project by Tom Baker at the University of Pennsylvania to ensure that comprehensive data on all these exchanges will be documented and made easily available to researchers. In cooperation with regulators and other officials, Baker and his team will collect and compile details on each exchange's choice architecture, product menu, relevant regulations, and much more. Such data should be useful for behavioral economics and beyond, including studies of adverse selection, market design, and price distortions. Additional funds will support a preliminary workshop for a broad spectrum of fellow researchers to discuss suggestions and build consensus about data collection specifics.

Men born between 1940 and 1944, who have no more than high school diplomas, are nearly 50 percent more likely than college graduates to claim Social Security benefits at age 62. There are many reasons why less-educated older adults retire early. Workers with limited education have greater incidences of poor health and histories of physically demanding work and are more apt to be employed in the public sector and unionized workplaces, where defined benefit pension plans often discourage work at older ages. But little is known about which of these or other factors are most important in the decision of older Americans with limited educations to end work early. Even less is known about the nature of the work trajectories of those with limited educations who go on to work after 62. This grant supports research by The Urban Institute's Richard Johnson, to investigate these questions. Combining data on detailed job characteristics from the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network (O*Net) with household survey data from the Health and Retirement Study, American Community Survey, and the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial censuses, Johnson will investigate how job characteristic and employment and earnings patterns vary by education and how those patterns have changed over the last 30 years. In addition to the research, additional grant funds will support an expert roundtable to discuss the findings and their potential implications for the future course of public policy.

Much research in the United States depends on the labor of postdoctoral fellows. Yet system for hiring, training, and compensating postdocs, however, is far from healthy. There were more than 50,000 postdocs in the United States in 2003. Their median salary was just $38,000, a meager amount considering that many are aged 30 or above and have devoted years to specialized training. Many have no health insurance and receive no career training. This grant provides support a report by the National Academy of Science's Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) that examines the strengths and weaknesses of the postdoctoral system in the United States and makes recommendations for its improvement. Grant funds will support data collection and analysis, as well as for two workshops to engage academic leaders, research funders, and postdoctoral fellows about the committee's findings. Additional funds will support a project to compile and analyze comprehensive data on U.S. postdoctoral fellows' immigration status and career outcomes.

Funds from this grant support the research of Prasanna Tambe of New York University, who proposes to exploit new sources of administrative data to shed light on the labor market economics of the IT workforce. Using millions of administrative records collected by popular job-related social media sites LinkedIn and CareerBuilder, Tambe will examine variations in the labor market behaviors of IT workers and firms, examining how the acquisition of IT skills by employees in a firm affect the firm's productivity, how firms value the acquisition of new IT skills, and how employee migration between firms affects the rate of adoption of new technology.

Funds from this grant support the work of Dartmouth's Chris Snyder as he studies the spread of open access publishing in academia and the impact this spread has had on scientific publication. Snyder's research is divided into three related projects. The first is to construct novel ways to measure the spread of open-access publication that take into account both the quality and quantity of the papers published. The second is to evaluate whether open access actually a paper's citation rate. The third is to examine whether open access journals exhibit less "publication bias," that is, the tendency to search for, cook up, and release only findings that significantly support the hypothesis under investigation. Most open access journals depend on the willingness of authors to pay publication fees. Precise impact measures for the thousands of new open access journals, together with careful estimates of the relationship between open access and journal quality, could therefore have significant impact on publishers, policymakers, academics, and their funders.

Evidence suggests that cooperation among scientists is a growing and important factor determining the productivity of research. The longitudinal data needed for a comprehensive understanding of this trend and its implications, however, are only just becoming available. This grant funds research by a team composed of economist Paula Stephan, econometrician Jacques Mairesse and engineer Lee Fleming to study the model dynamics and productivity of scientific teams. Funds will support data collection and analysis, along with a major conference to discuss research findings and examine the implications for science policy.

This grant funds a fourth phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS IV), a pioneering astronomical survey that utilizes a 2.5 meter optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory near Cloudcroft, New Mexico. Over the next six years, SDSS IV will pursue three innovative projects that seek to answer key questions in astronomy and astrophysics. The first project, APOGEE-2, will decipher the history of the growth of the Milky Way's stellar halo; precisely measure the mass of the Milky Way; determine the stellar structure around the galactic center; find stellar companions such as planets, white dwarfs and neutrons stars; and determine stellar masses, ages, and elemental abundances with unprecedented precision. The second, MaNGA will study 6,700 nearby galaxies and measure their dynamics, growth histories, and chemical abundances as a function of their mass, type, environment, and other controlling variables. The third, eBOSS, will measure the expansion of the universe over the past 12 billion years using baryonic acoustic oscillation, the most accurate absolute distance measurement technique known, and filling a gap in current measurements of galaxies between about 6.5 and 11 billion light?years away. eBoss will provide the fullest understanding yet of the so-called "dark energy" that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. As in previous phases of the projects, all SDSS data will be publically released through the internet, enabling astronomers and astrophysicists all over the world to use the data for their own research.

Funds from this grant support a project by SoundVision Productions to produce an ambitious, multimedia series titled BURN: An Energy Journal. Joined by two major media partners-Marketplace and National Geographic-BURN will focus on energy literacy and teaching the public about our energy future, which will result in two in-depth, one-hour programs on public radio about energy efficiency and future directions in energy. Additional funds will support the creation of a new BURN desk on the popular Marketplace program that will air, for one year, a monthly series of five- to seven-minute pieces on energy-related topics. Partner National Geographic will also distribute BURN content across its many platforms. BURN will include a website that will include four one-hour specials on energy along with a series of podcasts, source lists, and resource links, blogs, and video science explainers from the series' popular host, Alex Chadwick. A partnership with the University of Texas will produce weekly blog entries by top scientists, policymakers, industry leaders, researchers, and other opinion leaders. Additional grant monies will support outreach efforts to minority and ethnic audiences through targeting media channels that serve ethnic and minority constituencies. The BURN project promises to improve the public's basic energy literacy, to take a level-headed look at our energy future, and to stimulate a more realistic and informed public discussion on this critical subject.