Solyndra’s recent bankruptcy has sparked much debate about the market viability of solar energy. And while solar may not be as cost-effective as fossil fuels are now, a recent analysis finds that “solar power technologies in the US and Spain are likely to appr... More »
In a well-timed recent report, the Congressional Budgets Office (CBO) provides a series of statistics that largely reinforce the concerns being raised in the Occupy Wall Street protests. More »
Opinions vary within the policy community about whether developing nations are disappointingly off-track to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline set by the United Nations. More »
Biofuels are either essential to our energy independence and efforts to combat climate change or a boondoggle that threatens global food security. The World Bank’s Govinda R. Timilsina and Ashish Shrestha analyze this disconnect in “How Much Hope Should We Hav... More »
A family’s housing reality is often viewed as an index of its economic situation. However, Brian Jacob, Jens Ludwig, and Douglas Miller's new NBER working paper joins a groundswell of research that demonstrates that housing situations are in fact proxies for m... More »
While designed and marketed in Cupertino, California, the iPhone is estimated to have contributed $1.9 billion to the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2009. This is the finding of Yuqing Xing and Neal Detert, two economists with the Asian Development Bank Inst... More »
Charters are commonly seen as the answer to urban school districts’ troubles. However, it appears that they are not the answer to education issues everywhere, and may not be the answer at all. More »
An indigenous rights activist discusses how the failure of educational policies in Guatemala are intricately tied to persistent gender inequality. More »
As the economy struggles to rebound and the foreclosure crisis takes its toll on American cities, vacant land and abandoned buildings continue to abound. For America’s once-great manufacturing cities, the impact has been even greater as metropolitan areas thro... More »