Michael Ewens and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf examine many years of data on the investment performance of individual venture capitalists and analyze the results over time and as the VCs move between firms. They find differences in skill and style, even among partners investing at the same VC firm at the same time. They estimate that a partner’s human capital -- education, experience, skill -- is much more important than the VC firm’s organizational capital in explaining the firm's investment performance.

In an experiment in the Oklahoma City Public Schools, students were provided with free cellular phones and then received daily text messages about how getting an education is linked to a better future. Roland Fryer finds that receiving this information via text message is reported to have influenced the students’ beliefs about the value of education and encouraged them to be more focused and to work harder in school. However, these cell phone messages did not lead to measurable changes in attendance, behavior, or test scores.

In various studies, U.S. income has been measured as the market income of tax units based on tax return data from the IRS, the pre-tax but post-transfer cash income of households, and a combination of both of those data that also includes taxable realized capital gains. Philip Armour, Richard Burkhauser, and Jeff Larrimore start their analysis with a comprehensive definition of income that incorporates accrued capital gains, and thus measures yearly changes in wealth, rather than focusing on the realized taxable capital gains that appear in IRS tax return data. Using this approach reduces the previously observed growth in income inequality and, in particular, the rise in top-end income since 1989.