In a letter to the Financial Times, graduate student Daniel Aronoff explores the effectiveness Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regional policies. “If Israel severely cripples Hamas and Fatah emerges the winner of that contest, it will be an improvement from the standpoint of Israeli security, since Fatah is not committed to the goal of destroying Israel,” writes Aronoff.
Forbes contributor Peter Greene spotlights a new study co-authored by MIT researchers that examines the long-term effects of universal preschool in Boston. The researchers found, “preschool reduced the likelihood that a student would get in trouble in high school or ever be jailed. And preschool increased the likelihood that students would graduate from high school and that they would go on to attend college.”
Writing for The New York Times, Prof. Amy Finkelstein makes the case that cash transfers can do more to help the poor than expanding health insurance. “Cash helps recipients directly, while health insurance would pay mainly for care that many uninsured people were already receiving at low or no cost,” writes Finkelstein.
Prof. Esther Duflo speaks with Francesca Donner of The New York Times about her views on G.D.P., financial incentives, and how to encourage women to pursue careers in economics. “One of the mistakes made by economists in general was to agree collectively that G.D.P., and perhaps the stock market, is how we acknowledge success in a country,” says Duflo. “G.D.P. measures the value added in a country, but life is so much more than that.”
A study co-authored by MIT researchers examining the short and long-term effects of Boston’s universal public preschool program finds that pre-K has a substantial impact on student behavior, reports David Leonhardt for The New York Times. “Preschool attendees were less likely to be suspended in high school and less likely to be sentenced to juvenile incarceration,” writes Leonhardt. He adds that pre-K seems to “improve children’s social and emotional skills and help them mature more than it helps in a narrow academic sense.”
Writing for The New York Times, Profs. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo underscore the importance of helping other countries avoid a repeat of the coronavirus surge India is facing. “The world needs to look beyond India and avoid yet another mistake of timing,” they write. “We cannot afford to repeat the experience of the first wave, when we didn’t realize just how quickly a virus can travel. Neither should nations be lulled into a sense of false security by the progress of vaccination campaigns in the United States and Europe.”
Bloomberg reporter Benjamin Bain writes that Prof. Gary Gensler has been confirmed as the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bain writes that Gensler is “poised to confront everything from the fallout of the GameStop Corp. trading frenzy to the deluge of special purpose acquisition companies and the collapse of Archegos Capital Management.”
Prof. Gary Gensler has been approved to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, reports Marcy Gordon for the AP. The appointment signals “an emphasis on investor protection for the Wall Street watchdog agency after a deregulatory stretch during the Trump administration,” writes Gordon.
On The Interchange podcast, Prof. Jessika Trancik discusses her research exploring the cost declines in lithium-ion batteries and what it will take to reach mass-market adoption of electric vehicles.
In a letter to the Financial Times, graduate student Daniel Aronoff writes that “the US may avoid inflation, but it cannot escape the consequences of increased government spending, for good or ill.”
Prof. Nancy Rose speaks with Mary Suiter of the Women in Economics podcast about what led her to study economics, her time working at the U.S. Department of Justice, and why teaching and mentoring are so important to her. “A couple of extraordinarily influential teachers are the reason I’m an economist today, and so part of it is just trying to pass on my enthusiasm for economics and my appreciation for what it’s enabled me to do to students,” says Rose.
A new study by Prof. Jeffrey Harris finds that the extensive research invested in developing a vaccine for HIV has contributed to the successful development of Covid-19 vaccines, writes Derek Thompson for The Atlantic. Nearly 90 percent of COVID-19 vaccines that made it to clinical trials used technology that “could be traced back to prototypes tested in HIV vaccine trials,” Harris found.
A new study by Prof. Jessika Trancik and postdoctoral associate Micah Ziegler examining the plunge in lithium-ion battery costs finds that “every time output doubles, as it did five times between 2006 and 2016, battery prices fall by about a quarter,” reports The Economist. “A doubling in technological know-how, measured by patent filings, is associated with a 40% drop in price.”
In an article for Politico, Professor of the practice Zeynep Ton explores how pay disclosures could help shed led on whether workers are earning enough money to support their families. “Building an economy founded on good jobs will require deep, structural transformation, but you can only manage change if you measure," writes Ton and her co-author Katie Bach. “The best way to spur movement towards creating good jobs may be to start requiring that companies publish take-home pay data.”
Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with the BBC Newshour about her new study analyzing the dramatic decline in the costs of lithium-ion batteries. Trancik explains that the reduced price, “opens up markets for electric vehicles for more people. The battery makes up a substantial portion of the total cost of an electric vehicle and the fact that costs have fallen by 97% over the last few decades means that these cars are no longer just for the wealthy.”