While polling indicates that the federal government’s budget deficit is high on people’s list of problems for the government to solve, Pietro Nivola writes that few are willing to accept the proposed methods to fix it.

Every presidency develops a leadership style, which has bearing on presidential accomplishments, writes Pietro Nivola. Nivola compares the leadership styles of Barack Obama to Woodrow Wilson during their first years as president, noting that two men faced similar issues and examining possible lessons for President Obama from President Wilson’s experiences.

Pietro Nivola writes that despite American federalism's benefits, the economic crisis of the past few years served as reminder that federal, state and local policy can at times serve at cross-purposes.

Pietro Nivola offers two cheers, instead of three, for the American political system in light of the latest global economic concerns. He argues that since 2008, the federal government has not committed many basic economic blunders, but fiscal policy could improve on the state and local levels.

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.

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

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…

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…

“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,…

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…

A time-honored but often problematic practice in basic welfare economics is to separate efficiency considerations from distributional concerns. In an economy with given endowments and a given distribution of them, the argument goes, there exists a set of prices that will guide competitive behavior toward an efficient allocation of resources. If the result is not…

Throughout history, crisis and human progress have often gone hand in hand. While the growing COVID-19 pandemic could strengthen nationalism and isolationism and accelerate the retreat from globalization, the outbreak also could spur a new wave of international cooperation of the sort that emerged after World War II. COVID-19 may become not only a huge…

During this unusual time of flexible schedules and more time at home, many of us may have increased opportunities for long-form reading. Below, the scholars and staff from the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings offer their recommendations for books to read during this time. Max Bouchet recommends The Nation City: Why Mayors Are…

The COVID-19 crisis represents an unprecedented test of human solidarity. Will the wealthy—or, indeed, all those with stable incomes or savings cushions—embrace measures to support the poor and economically insecure? Will the young, among whom the mortality rate is lower, make sacrifices to protect the old? And will people in rich countries accept resource transfers…

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…

After 17 years of transition to market economies in central and eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), are people better off now than they were in 1989? Brookings Global recently hosted a presentation by Senior Fellow and European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) Chief Economist, Erik Berglöf, on the 2007 Transition…

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.…

The current crisis reveals two major flaws in the world’s crisis-resolution mechanisms: (i) funds available to launch credible rescue operations are insufficient, and (ii) national crisis responses have negative spillovers. One solution is to emulate the EU’s enhanced cooperation solution at the global level, with the IMF ensuring that the rules are respected. Big global…

The leaders of Europe will meet this weekend to respond to the rapid deterioration of the economic situation in Emerging Europe. The situation varies a great deal; some countries have been more prudent in their policies than others. But all are joined, more or less strongly, through the deeply integrated European banking system. Western banks…

Europe needs a robust and agile development bank that can cooperate with, but also challenge, the Chinese institutions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative and the United States’ newly reinforced development agencies. With this goal in mind, the European Union recently appointed a “wise persons group” (WPG) to review the European Union’s development-finance architecture.…

With the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replacing No Child Left Behind as the new federal education law, states have gained greater freedom to personalize their education policies. ESSA’s promise of decentralization is a victory for state education leaders, but also transfers to them the responsibility of ensuring that school systems are held accountable. During…

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…