Government

Prof. Simon Johnson and Prof. Catherine Wolfram write for The Los Angeles Times about the impact of high oil prices on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is earning fistfuls of money from its oil sales, and using the revenues to buy tanks, pay soldiers and keep the war out of the minds of ordinary Russian citizens,” explain Johnson and Wolfram. “High oil prices enable Putin to test Western democracies’ resolve, and the dysfunction on Capitol Hill plays into his hands. That makes maintaining the oil price cap, with added protections, all the more important for reducing Putin’s ability to continue fighting.”

MIT Innovation Fellow Brian Deese speaks with Financial Times reporter Gideon Rachman to explain Bidenomics and how it is impacting the economy. “I think the term [Bidenomics] has taken on a lot of different elements,” says Deese. “To me, it’s a description of what are the three core economic policy priorities of the Biden administration that have played out over the course the last two years.”

A new study by Prof. Jonathan Gruber finds that helping undocumented immigrants in the U.S. connect with primary care doctors could help reduce ER visits, reports Cara Murez for HealthDay. “The data showed a 21% drop in emergency department use, as well as a 42% drop for folks with high-risk medical profiles,” writes Murez. 

Boston Globe reporter Macie Parker spotlights the new John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Kendall Square, the first building to open in MIT’s redevelopment of the 14-acre Volpe site that will ultimately include “research labs, retail, affordable housing, and open space, with the goal of not only encouraging innovation, but also enhancing the surrounding community.” Parker highlights the green technology included in the new Volpe Center: solar panels; triple-paned glass; electric vehicle charging stations; a rainwater reclamation and reuse system; and green and cool roof technology to lower energy use. 

Writing for The Washington Post, Brian Deese, an MIT Innovation Fellow, explores the resilience of America’s post pandemic economic recovery and the strength of the labor market. “This economic recovery is defying expectations,” writes Deese. “Enabling more people to work can extend this improbable progress and lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth.”  

Writing for The Hill, Prof. Emeritus Henry Jacoby and his colleagues explore how younger GOP voters seem to increasingly favor lawmakers taking action on climate change. “For the sake of the planet, we can only hope that younger Republicans speak out forcefully and that their elders start listening,” they writes, “and, most importantly, that dissatisfaction with the party’s failure to address climate change is expressed in the voting booth.”

Politico reporter Joanne Kenen spotlights Prof. Adam Berinsky’s new book, “Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight it.” The book “examines attitudes toward both politics and health, both of which are undermined by distrust and misinformation in ways that cause harm to both individuals and society.”

Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks with Bloomberg reporters Haidi Stroud-Watts and Sherry Anh about her outlook on the future of the economy and economic policy “We just don’t know right now where unemployment could settle, where inflation settles around 2%,” says Forbes. “We don’t know where interest rates could settle to balance growth and employment, according to the Fed’s mandate.”

Research by Alden Cheng PhD ‘23 “suggests that big college football games in October 2016 distracted voters from seeing fake news stories that favored Donald Trump,” reports Kevin Lewis for The Boston Globe. “Counties around colleges that played a big game in that month had fewer online searches for pro-Trump fake-news-related terms and had lower percentages of votes for Trump than would otherwise have been expected, given other political demographics,” writes Lewis.

Writing for The Hill, Andre Zollinger, senior policy manager at J-PAL Global, makes the case that “current attention to air pollution can be transformational for how we tackle climate change. Policy leaders in the U.S. and abroad should seize this moment of reckoning over our common struggle for clean air as an opportunity to focus on policies that are known to curb air pollution and simultaneously combat climate change.”

Prof. Charles Stewart III spoke at the National Conference of State Legislatures Summit and addressed the importance of ensuring state and local governments are adequately funding election administration, reports Jennifer A. Kingson for Axios. Stewart noted that presidential elections cost $2 billion-$5 billion to administer nationally, yet most of the nation's 10,000 local jurisdictions are woefully underfunded.

This past spring, Prof. J. Phillip Thompson and MIT lecturer Elisabeth Reynolds taught a class at MIT that sent students to work with local officials across the country to help identify available federal funds for climate change mitigation, reports Farah Stockman for The New York Times. “We have to figure out how to use it. Because if we don’t, wealthy communities will go green, and low-income communities will stay brown,” says Thompson. “Unless we do something intentionally to make sure that it is fair, it will bypass poor communities.”

Prof. Adam Berinsky speaks with "Our Body Politic" host Farai Chideya about his new book “Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight it.” Berinksky explains that the, "mere questioning of political reality can have serious downstream consequences because sowing doubt about political policies and claims is much easier than resolving such doubt,” says Berinsky. 

MIT Innovation Fellow Brian Deese speaks with CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin about the state of the U.S. economy and the impact of “Bidenomics,” President Joe Biden’s economic philosophy.

Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks with New York Times reporter Jeanna Smialek about the future of interest rates in the United States. “Now, the economy has learned to function with higher interest rates,” says Forbes. “It gives me hope that we’re coming back to a more normal equilibrium.”