Adele Morris, Pietro Nivola and Charles Schultze scrutinize the rationale and efficacy of increased clean-energy expenditures from the U.S. government since 2008. The authors review the history of energy technology policy, examine the policy's environmental and energy- independence rationales, discuss political challenges and reasons for backing clean energy and offer their own policy recommendations.

In honor of his teacher and friend James Q. Wilson, Pietro Nivola reminds us of the important perspectives Wilson gifted to our political intellect.

Pietro Nivola examines lessons from the War of 1812 and applies them to the political polarization of today.

Pietro Nivola examines the recent fiscal cliff agreement, arguing that despite the criticism it received from both sides of the political spectrum, its provisions reflect what the majority of Americans want.

In This Too Shall Pass: Reflections on the Repositioning of Political Parties, Pietro Nivola argues that those who fret that the political parties will never evolve to meet half-way on policy or ideology need only to look to American history to see that this view is wrong-headed.  

Donald Trump’s wild, swinging attacks against the intelligence community have been so far off the charts of traditional behavior for a president-elect that it is hard to wrap one’s mind around—and impossible not to wonder what lies behind it. That Trump is trying to throw everyone off the track of his ties to Russia and…

With his executive action suspending the admission of refugees to the United States and temporarily halting the entry of citizens from a variety of Muslim countries, President Donald Trump made a quick down payment on a key campaign promise. He also set the United States on a disastrous course—one that threatens to weaken our national…

Sometime soon jihadists will likely carry out a terrorist attack against the U.S. How the Trump administration reacts will have a profound effect not just on national security but on the national psyche. Much will depend on the nature of the attack. It may occur in the U.S. and involve one or two operators inspired by…

On Wednesday, January 29, the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program (Brookings Metro) hosted “Boosting Growth Across More of America: Pushing Back Against the ‘Winner-take-most’ Economy,” an event delving into the research and proposals offered in Robert D. Atkinson, Mark Muro, and Jacob Whiton’s recent report “The case for growth centers: How to spread tech innovation across…

In December, Brookings Metro and Robert Atkinson of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation released a report noting that 90% of the nation's innovation sector employment growth in the last 15 years was generated in just five major coastal cities: Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose, Calif. This finding sparked appropriate consternation,…

At first blush, it seems like the coronavirus pandemic is shutting down the economy everywhere, equally, with frightening force and totality. In many respects, that’s true: Across the country, consumer spending—which supports 70% of the economy—is crashing in community after community, as people avoid stores, restaurants, movie theaters, offices, and other public places. Already, the…

The coronavirus pandemic seems likely to trigger a severe worldwide recession of uncertain length. In addition to responding to the public health needs, policymakers are debating how they can respond with creative new economic policies, which are now urgently needed. One strategy they should consider is both traditional and yet oddly missing from the current…

As if American workers don’t have enough to worry about right now, the COVID-19 pandemic is resurfacing concerns about technology’s impact on the future of work. Put simply, any coronavirus-related recession is likely to bring about a spike in labor-replacing automation. What’s the connection between recessions and automation? On its face, the transition to automation may…

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown America into a coast-to-coast lockdown, spurring ubiquitous economic impacts. Data on smartphone movement indicate that virtually all regions of the nation are practicing some degree of social distancing, resulting in less foot traffic and sales for businesses. Meanwhile, last week’s release of unemployment insurance claims confirms that every state is seeing a significant…

As Congress passes multi-trillion dollar support packages in response to the economic and physical shocks of the coronavirus pandemic, what are state and local governments doing to respond? What kinds of economic and other assistance do they need? What will be the enduring impact of this crisis on workers and certain industries? On this episode,…

With the national economy virtually immobilized as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it might seem like the crisis is going to mute the issue of regional economic divergence and its pattern of booming superstar cities and depressed, left-behind places. But don’t be so sure about that. In fact, the pandemic might intensify the unevenness…

Will the coronavirus change everything? While that sentiment feels true to the enormity of the crisis, it likely isn’t quite right, as scholars from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program have been exploring since the pandemic began. Instead, the COVID-19 crisis seems poised to accelerate or intensify many economic and metropolitan trends that were already underway, with huge…

Amid rising layoffs and rampant uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a good thing that Democrats in the House of Representatives say they plan to move quickly to advance the next big coronavirus relief package. Especially important is the fact that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) seems determined to build the next package around a generous infusion…

This week in Class Notes: The digital divide—the correlation between income and home internet access —explains much of the inequality we observe in people's ability to self-isolate. The labor force participation rate among older Americans and the age at which they claim Social Security retirement benefits have risen in recent years. Higher minimum wages lead to a greater prevalence…

On March 16, 2020, the Federal government issued new guidelines to help protect Americans during the coronavirus pandemic. Dubbed “15 days to slow the spread,” these guidelines urged Americans to avoid social gatherings, discretionary travel, shopping trips, and social visits. Since then, many states, at different times, also issued directives to promote social distancing. What…

World leaders are deliberating when and how to re-open business operations amidst considerable uncertainty as to the economic consequences of the coronavirus. One pressing question is whether or not countries that have remained relatively open have managed to escape at least some of the economic harm, and whether that harm is related to the spread…

The COVID-19 crisis has allowed a revealing look into the shortcomings of the U.S.’s child welfare system. While no institution has proved strong enough to operate effectively and efficiently under the unprecedented circumstances brought on by COVID-19, the crisis has unveiled holes in the child welfare system that call for both immediate and long-term action.…

Because of the COVID-19 crisis, the US economy has nearly ground to a halt. Tens of millions of workers are now seeing their jobs and livelihoods disappear—in some cases, permanently. Many businesses will never reopen, especially those that have or had large debts to manage. State and federal lawmakers have responded by pouring trillions of…

In the early part of the 20th century, women sought and gained many legal rights, including the right to vote as part of the 19th Amendment. Their entry into the workforce, into occupations previously reserved for men, and into the social and political life of the nation should be celebrated. The biggest remaining challenge is…

In addition to the primary devastation of thousands of lives lost, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to economic despair and joblessness for millions of Americans. But it is not just those out of work at risk of hardship. “Essential workers” who continue to go to work while the virus is actively spreading in the population…

COVID-19 has upended, along with everything else, the balance sheets of the nation’s elementary and secondary schools. As soon as school buildings closed, districts faced new costs associated with distance learning, ranging from physically distributing instructional packets and up to three meals a day, to supplying instructional programming for television and distributing Chromebooks and internet…

This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in…

Over the weekend, the Trump administration withdrew from the process of developing a new Global Compact on Migration, designed to lay out a strategy for addressing that subject. The objective was to reach agreement by the time world leaders meet at their annual gathering in New York next September. The United States had been involved…

Across the world, cities are grappling with climate change. While half of the world’s population now lives in cities, more than 70 percent of carbon emissions originate in cities. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the UN’s 2016 Sustainable Development Goals, and the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany have all recognized that cities…

When it comes to science policy, we should take President Trump at his word. On Friday, the Trump administration prohibited officials at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from using seven words and phrases within 2018 budget documents: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based”.  Public outrage flared up against the Orwellian-style censorship,…

Almost immediately after the Trump administration withdrew from the Global Compact on Migration earlier this month, American mayors responded by requesting their seat at the table. Leaders of 18 U.S. cities, from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee to San Jose, joined a petition signed by more than 130 mayors from around the world. They asked co-facilitators Mexico and…

This November, residents of more than 30 U.S. cities voted to elect their top leader. Whether four-term veterans like Cleveland’s Frank Jackson or first-time politicians like Helena’s Wilmot Collins, U.S. mayors are now more than ever on the front lines of major global and societal change. The world’s challenges are on their doorsteps—refugee integration, climate…

Bill Finan, director of the Brookings Institution Press, discusses “The New Localism: How Cities can Thrive in the Age of Populism” with authors Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak. In their book and in the interview, Katz and Nowak explain why cities and the communities that surround them are best suited to address many of the…

“Assessing your innovation district: A how-to guide,” is a tool for public and private leaders to audit the assets that comprise their local innovation ecosystem. The guide is designed to reveal how to best target resources toward innovative and inclusive economic development tailored to an area’s unique strengths and challenges. Over the past two decades,…

Over the past two decades, a confluence of changing market demands and demographic preferences have led to a revaluation of urban places—and a corresponding shift in the geography of innovation. This trend has resulted in a clustering of firms, intermediaries, and workers—often near universities, medical centers, or other anchors—in dense innovation districts. Local economic development…

If you leave Argentina and come back 20 days later, according to a tragically apt joke, you’ll find everything is different, but if you come back after 20 years, you’ll find that everything is the same. Will the country’s likely next president, Alberto Fernández, finally manage to erase that punch line? According to the World Bank, since…

The notion of an “international” civil service goes back a century, to the establishment of the League of Nations after World War I. Whereas civil servants had until then always served their countries or empires, the League’s small secretariat would facilitate cooperation among member states. The founding of the United Nations following World War II…

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two of this year’s recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, are the latest among leading economists to remind us that gross domestic product is an imperfect measure of human welfare. The Human Development Index, published by the United Nations Development Programme, aggregates indicators of life expectancy, education,…

There is an overwhelming consensus among scientists that this decade will be the last window for humanity to change the current global trajectory of carbon dioxide emissions so that the world can get close to zero net emissions by around 2050, and thus avoid potentially catastrophic climate risks. But although the massive technological and economic…

The provision of global public goods (GPG)—such as mitigating climate change, fighting tax avoidance, or preserving and extending fair rules-based international trade—is even more important for Africa than for other parts of the world. And yet, Africa could be sidelined from the decisionmaking process for the foreseeable future in a global governance system dominated by…