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

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.  

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

“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…

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,…

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…

On the eve of President Hu Jintao's long-anticipated visit to Washington, critical economic policy issues loom large for both the U.S. and China. Over the past two decades, China has transformed into a major economic power and continues to play a growing role in the global community. Its ascension is likely to be one of…

LONDON After his visit to Washington, President Hu Jintao of China might wish he had stayed home. In all likelihood, he will have encountered an onslaught of accusations of currency manipulation, unfair trade and intellectual property rights violationsThe alarm over China's economic ascension is akin to the China Syndrome, made famous by the 1979 film…

For decades westerners have lectured central and eastern European policymakers on how to regulate and supervise, balance their budgets and stem credit expansion. Now they must deal with the consequences of a global crisis triggered because the west broke all the rules it preached. Worse, it is a crisis they cannot do much to resolve.…

Charter schools, introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s, were conceived as laboratories of experimentation in instruction, integration, and school leadership. Over time, they have become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional public schools. As of this year, charters account for approximately six percent of all public school students, and President Obama’s proposed budget includes…

Arne Duncan, former U.S. secretary of education during the Obama administration and now a nonresident senior fellow with the Brown Center on Education Policy, discusses the crisis of youth violence in Chicago and solutions that strengthen schools and encourage more opportunities for those who are marginalized to make a living in the legal economy. http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/4485071…

Schools of education are providing one of the most important services in America today, training our future teachers who will prepare our children to succeed in work and in life. No other responsibility is more directly linked to our future. The world’s strongest economy relies on a skilled and creative workforce. The world’s oldest democracy…

The federal government has been involved in public schools for decades. Yet, the relationship between the federal government and the states has evolved and recalibrated regularly over that period. Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election is widely viewed as a signal of change for the federal government’s role in American society generally, and…

Watch a video of the event on CSPAN.org » The lives of young people are disrupted, traumatized, and cut short by gun violence every single day in the United States. Despite progress being made in some cities to reduce gun violence, communities in Chicago have recently endured record numbers of homicides and shootings. Over 71 percent…

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sits down with young men from Chicago CRED (Creating Real Economic Diversity) to discuss the steps they have taken to disrupt the cycle of gun violence in their community and transition into the legal economy. http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/6400344 Also in this episode, meet David M. Rubenstein Fellow Randall Akee in…

The Department of Education has rescinded the Gainful Employment regulations developed by the Obama administration. These regulations were designed to cut off federal student aid to postsecondary programs that produce earnings too low to support the debt students incur while earning credentials that promise to lead to good jobs. This action is a significant step…

Nir Jaimovich and Henry Siu have written a very helpful and useful paper that summarizes the empirical literature by labor economists on how automation affect the labor market and the middle class. Their main arguments can be summarized as follows: The labor markets in the US (and other industrialized countries) has become increasingly “polarized” in…

CSED Working Paper No. 33: Physician Social Networks and Geographic Variation in Medical Care

Studies in this week’s Hutchins Roundup find that collecting payments from insurers is highly costly for health care providers, superstar firms account for less of productivity growth than previously thought, and more. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Costly billing hassles…

The economic activity of the U.S. has plummeted in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and unemployment has soared—largely the result of social distancing policies designed to slow the spread of the virus. The depth and speed of the decline will rival that of the Great Depression. But will the aftermath be as painful? Or…

The monthly jobs report—the unemployment rate from one survey and the change in employer payrolls from another survey—is one of the most closely watched economic indicators, particularly at a time of an economic crisis like today. Here’s a look at how these data are collected and how to interpret them during the COVID-19 pandemic. What…

It is not news that, for all its promised benefits, artificial intelligence has a bias problem. Concerns regarding racial or gender bias in AI have arisen in applications as varied as hiring, policing, judicial sentencing, and financial services. If this extraordinary technology is going to reach its full potential, addressing bias will need to be…

Deepfakes are videos that have been constructed to make a person appear to say or do something that they never said or did. With artificial intelligence-based methods for creating deepfakes becoming increasingly sophisticated and accessible, deepfakes are raising a set of challenging policy, technology, and legal issues. Deepfakes can be used in ways that are…

The world is experiencing extraordinary advances in artificial intelligence, with applications being deployed in finance, health care, education, e-commerce, criminal justice, and national defense, among other areas. As AI technology advances across industries and into everyday use around the world, important questions must be addressed regarding transparency, fairness, privacy, ethics, and human safety. What are…

Much has been written, and rightly so, about the potential that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to create and promote misinformation. But there is a less well-recognized but equally important application for AI in helping to detect misinformation and limit its spread. This dual role will be particularly important in geopolitics, which is closely…

In 2019, an innocent man was jailed in New York City after the complaining witness showed police screenshots of harassing text messages and recordings of threatening voicemails that the man allegedly sent in violation of a protective order. The man’s Legal Aid Society defense attorney subpoenaed records from SpoofCard, a company that lets people send…

In this week’s episode, John Page, a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program, assesses the potential role of several economic strategies in transforming Africa’s industrial development for the global economy. “Between now and about 2030, the estimates are that as many as 85 million jobs at [the] bottom end of manufacturing will…

Why is there so little industry in Africa? Over the past forty years, industry and business interests have moved increasingly from the developed to the developing world, yet Africa’s share of global manufacturing has fallen from about 3 percent in 1970 to less than 2 percent in 2014. Industry is important to low-income countries. It…

The 2016 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank occur during uncertain times for the “African Growth Miracle.” After more than two decades of sustained economic expansion, growth in sub-Saharan Africa slowed to 3.4 percent in 2015, the weakest performance since 2009. The growth slow-down reflects lower commodity prices, declining growth…

Since 1995, Africa’s explosive economic growth has taken place without the changes in economic structure that normally occur as incomes per person rise. In particular, Africa’s experience with industrialization has been disappointing, especially as, historically, industry has been a driving force behind structural change. The East Asian “Miracle” is a manufacturing success story, but sub-Saharan…

At his swearing in, the new African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina set out an agenda for the economic transformation of the continent. Among the five pillars of that agenda—popularly known as the “high fives”—is one that may have surprised many, especially in the donor community: Industrialize Africa. Why the surprise? Beyond supporting improvements in…

Editor’s Note: On September 21, the Department of Commerce and Bloomberg Philanthropies are hosting the second U.S.-Africa Business Forum. Building on the forum in 2014, this year’s meeting again hosts heads of state, U.S. CEOs, and African business leaders, but aims to go beyond past commitments and towards effective implementation. This year’s forum will focus on six sectors important…

Although African countries enjoyed fast economic growth based on high commodity prices over the past decade, this growth has not translated into the economic transformation the continent needs to eradicate extreme poverty and enjoy economic prosperity. Now, more than ever, the necessity for Africa to industrialize is being stressed at various international forums, ranging from…

Against a background of protracted decline in global commodity prices and renewed focus on the Africa rising narrative, Africa is proving resilient, underpinned by strong economic performance in non-commodity exporting countries. The rise of African cities contains the potential for new engines for the continent’s structural transformation, if harnessed properly. However, the susceptibility of Africa’s…