In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a rule banning most noncompete agreements nationwide, arguing that greater worker mobility would foster new business creation and raise workers' earnings. The rule was later vacated, but it brought renewed attention to a longstanding debate over the economic effects of noncompetes. Supporters of noncompete agreements contend that these restrictions encourage firms to invest in new ideas by preventing employees from taking proprietary knowledge to competitors.

In a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, authors Kate Reinmuth and Emma Rockall examine the effect of noncompetes on innovation, using 26 changes in state-level noncompete enforceability between 1991 and 2016. They find that an average-sized increase in enforceability reduced patenting by about 14 percent after five years, with larger declines among the most novel patents and venture-backed firms.

Reinmuth and Rockall recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the arguments for and against noncompetes, how they isolated the causal effect of enforceability on innovation, and what their findings imply for policymakers.

Intimate partner violence, or IPV, refers to physical, sexual, or emotional abuse and controlling behavior by a current or former partner. Women bear a disproportionate share of the burden of IPV worldwide—roughly one in three women experience IPV in their lifetimes—and low- and middle-income countries have a greater occurrence of IPV, with larger costs as a percentage of GDP.

In a paper in the Journal of Economic Literature, authors Manisha Shah and Lydia Barski surveyed the economic research on IPV and identified key findings.

Shah recently spoke with Tyler Smith about how to measure IPV, the factors that drive individuals to perpetrate and enter into IPV, and the policies that are effective in reducing it.

Most firms rely on managers to spot talented workers and to encourage them to move into bigger roles within the company. But managers are judged on how their own teams perform, giving them an incentive to hold on to their best people.

In a paper in the American Economic Review, economist Ingrid Haegele provides the first empirical evidence that talent hoarding is prevalent and costly. Drawing on personnel records and surveys from a large European manufacturer with more than 200,000 employees, she finds that 75 percent of managers acknowledge hoarding. She says that the workers held back are disproportionately high-performing, with the effect falling hardest on women.

Haegele recently spoke with Tyler Smith about how she measured talent hoarding, what it costs workers, and what firms might do about it.