economic growth

  • How China’s Zero-Covid Policy Evolved and Failed

    How China’s Zero-Covid Policy Evolved and Failed

    In December 2022, China abandoned its draconian Zero-COVID policy (also called Dynamic Zero-COVID Policy), a move that was one of the most dramatic shifts in its coronavirus prevention measures. As the world belatedly welcomes China back, it is important to look back at the series of policy changes from the…

  • Enterprise Zones and the Fight to Stop Economic Decline

    Enterprise Zones and the Fight to Stop Economic Decline

    The issue of regional inequality is endemic to modern developed economies. While some regions experience growing populations and economic innovation, others are subject to decline. Even within specific high-growth metropolitan areas, there are neighborhoods that do not share the growth. Enterprise zone (EZ) programs are policy interventions that aim to…

  • Crime Prevention for Economic Development: Lessons from Chicago and Los Angeles

    Crime Prevention for Economic Development: Lessons from Chicago and Los Angeles

    Crime imposes an immense burden on cities, taking its toll in higher policing costs, lower property values, fewer job opportunities, and reduced overall quality of life. High and rising rates of crime are often cited as reasons for businesses not to locate to areas of concentrated poverty. Meanwhile, municipal leaders…

  • Aquaculture May Reduce Rural Poverty, Income Inequality

    Aquaculture May Reduce Rural Poverty, Income Inequality

    Since 2014, more than half of all fish consumed by humans have been farmed rather than caught in the wild. Aquaculture — which includes the farming of not only fish, but also mollusks, shellfish, algae, seaweed and more — has grown exponentially for decades and has emerged as a major…

  • Tech: The Goal, or Just Another Path to Growth?

    Tech: The Goal, or Just Another Path to Growth?

    In 2012, the average resident of San Francisco supported about $76,000 in gross domestic —about $19,000 more than the average in Chicago. That gap has widened to more than $29,000 today. San Francisco’s economy is growing nearly three times faster on a per capita basis than Chicago’s. Meanwhile, San Jose…

  • Does Economic Growth Help or Hinder Poverty Alleviation? A Case Study From Mexico

    Does Economic Growth Help or Hinder Poverty Alleviation? A Case Study From Mexico

    The uneven distribution of globalization-driven economic growth has led researchers to question whether growth actually decreases poverty and inequality. They have tried to answer questions such as: Does growth affect poverty at all? Is growth sufficient to reduce poverty? What conditions must exist for the growth of a country to be pro-poor?…

  • Economists Are Finding a New Perspective on Immigration

    Economists Are Finding a New Perspective on Immigration

    As recently as twenty years ago, economists taught that as the supply of unskilled labor increased due to immigration, legal or otherwise, the wages and employment of natives would fall as the two groups competed for a fixed number of jobs. This perspective casts immigration as a potential threat to…

  • How Organizational Changes Can Increase Competitiveness: Evidence from Brazil

    How Organizational Changes Can Increase Competitiveness: Evidence from Brazil

    Productivity is a fundamental concept in business because it encompasses how employees, firms, and the economy as a whole efficiently transform their inputs into outputs. From the macroeconomic perspective, productivity is often analyzed using aggregate industry data in order to better understand the trends and drivers of economic growth. Likewise,…

  • Separate and Suffering: The Damaging Effects of Residential Segregation on Metropolitan Economies

    Separate and Suffering: The Damaging Effects of Residential Segregation on Metropolitan Economies

    This piece, first published on January 29, 2014, is being republished as part of the Chicago Policy Review‘s 20th Anniversary Series. Please visit us here to learn more about the series from our Executive Editors. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited housing discrimination and put an end to one of the last…

  • The Cost of Gender Inequality

    The Cost of Gender Inequality

    This piece, first published on October 22, 2014, is being republished as part of the Chicago Policy Review‘s 20th Anniversary Series. Please visit us here to learn more about the series from our Executive Editors. Throughout the world women often receive less education and are not employed at the same rate as their male counter parts.…

  • All Growth Is Local: Housing Supply and the Economics of Mobility

    All Growth Is Local: Housing Supply and the Economics of Mobility

    Economists argue that more reasonable zoning regulations could boost social mobility, increase incomes, and expand economic growth.