Archive
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Tech Employment Drives Increased Wages…Just Like Other High-Paying Jobs
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When Amazon started looking for a home for its second headquarters (“HQ2”), cities across North America vied to be selected. They offered tax breaks and other incentives, seeking the prestige of a high-profile corporate headquarters and the promise of economic stimulation. Proponents of a tech influx argued that higher tech-sector…
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Global Insect Decline Linked to Light Pollution
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Artificial light may be devastating populations of insects, including species that provide crucial support for human agricultural systems. In a recent article published in the Annals of Applied Biology, researchers examined the effects of light pollution on insects. Artificial light increases environmental pressures faced by insects, the study concluded, and…
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Increasing the Demand for Education With Unconditional Cash Transfers
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Sub-Saharan Africa hosts the majority of the 124 million children not enrolled in school across the globe. Education plays a key role in improving individual and social well-being, but high poverty impedes access to quality education. This cycle of poverty can be broken by reducing the burden of the financial…
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How the EPA is Generating Grassroots Support for its Mission
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Less than a month after the 2016 elections, a lame duck session of Congress passed the bipartisan Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Act of 2016, granting federal agencies explicit authority to advance their missions in partnership with individuals, private and nonprofit entities, and foreign governments through crowdsourcing and citizen science. Citizen…
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How Decentralization and International Aid Reduce Inequality in Ethiopia
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In 2017, foreign aid from official donors totaled over $146.6 billion. The bulk of this aid went to decentralizing or decentralized countries, in which regional or local governments are granted powers and resources. Localized governments are believed to be more accountable to voters because they are “downward-looking” and need to…
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The New Housing Discrimination: Realtor Minority Steering
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2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act—an important victory for activists in the Civil Rights era—but this historic legislation did not eradicate discrimination in the housing market. Evidence shows that real estate agents today still steer buyers into same-race neighborhoods—a phenomenon where realtors show only selected neighborhoods…
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Making Good Government Happen: A Conversation with Tom Komaniecki, Regional Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) is an independent division of HHS charged with protecting the integrity of HHS programs and the health and welfare of HHS program beneficiaries. The OIG is a nonpartisan “watchdog” that conducts audits, investigates fraud, and evaluates…
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The Hidden Relationship Between Housing, Migration, and Inequality
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In the November issue of the Journal of Urban Economics, Peter Ganong of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and Daniel Shoag of the Harvard Kennedy School investigate a troubling question: “Why has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined?” In economics, convergence—or the “catch-up effect”—is the hypothesis that per…
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The relationship between Autocracy, Democracy, and Terrorism
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The manifestation of terrorism in a given country is typically a function of the country’s institutional mechanisms and internal stability. These, in turn, are directly influenced by the political institutions that govern the country. In a recent paper, economist Khusrav Gaibulloev and political scientists Todd Sandler and James Piazza consider…
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Elite Misperceptions: Examining Asymmetry in Partisan Political Participation
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Do politicians truly represent the populations they serve? Recent research may provide an answer. David E. Broockman and Christopher Skovron’s recent paper asserts that there is a systemic incongruity between true public opinion and elected officials’ perceptions of public opinion. Using a survey that sampled over 3,500 state representatives across seven…
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Bridging social science, policy and community: engaged research
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If you ask a social researcher—psychologist, sociologist, cultural anthropologist—why they chose their profession, you might hear something like, “to help people,” but western social research is sometimes criticized for failing to help those who may need it most: groups on the underside of the power differential. When applied social research…