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The Hill

Writing for The Hill, Sloan Prof. Catherine Wolfram and UCLA Prof. Kimberly Clausing explore why they feel U.S. politicians should embrace carbon pricing. “2025 will be a big year for Congress to tackle longstanding fiscal issues and further climate policy efforts,” they write. “Before this can happen, politicians need to hear timely arguments backed by up-to-date evidence.”

Marketplace

Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Marketplace reporter Matt Levin about the potential impact of raising the retirement age in the United States. Gruber suggests a new system where retirement age would vary by income. “People who are sufficiently high income, should be expected to work longer and get less in the system,” says Gruber. “People with physically demanding jobs and low income should be able to retire earlier.”

Axios

MIT’s new Climate Policy Center, directed by Prof. Christopher Knittel, will aim to produce “policy-relevant research on shorter timescales, while also pursuing more typical, long-term peer-reviewed work,” reports Andrew Freeman for Axios.

CNBC

MIT Innovation Fellow Brian Deese speaks with CNBC about how the new class of weight loss drugs will impact American taxes and the federal deficit. “These drugs could touch tens of millions of Americans, that’s the good news,” says Deese. “They have the potential to reduce obesity, address diabetes and reduce the health care costs associated with that. The problem is that the scale and the cost of these drugs is so large, that it could add enormously to the federal budget.”

Heatmap

Prof. Catherine Wolfram speaks with Heatmap reporter Matthew Zeitlin about her new study examining the effectiveness of climate policies in reducing emissions. Wolfram and her colleague found that instituting a carbon fee and a clean electricity standard would reduce emissions the most. Wolfram added that if the U.S. were to institute a carbon fee, it would be a major step towards a worldwide carbon price. “The more countries that get in this game,” Wolfram said, “the more powerful that policy can be.”

Government Technology

Senior Lecturer Luis Videgaray speaks with Government Technology reporter Nikki Davidson about concerns facing emerging AI programs and initiatives. Videgaray underscores the importance of finding vendors, "who are willing to protect the data in a way that is appropriate and also provides the state or local government agency with the required degree of transparency about the workings of the model, the data that was used for training and how that data will interact with the data supplied by the customer.”

New York Times

Prof. Jonathan Gruber, MIT Innovation Fellow Brian Deese and Stanford doctoral student Ryan Cummings write for The New York Times about the health benefits of new weight-loss drugs and the risk they pose to American taxpayers. “The magnitude of potential benefit and potential cost — roughly $15,000 per year per person — posed by these drugs suggests that policymakers may have no alternative but to step in and bring their costs in line with their social benefits,” they write. “If policymakers succeed in doing so, we could build a model for drug price negotiation that enables an extraordinary medical breakthrough to improve both our health and our fiscal position.”

Financial Times

Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Kristin Forbes delves into her new study examining how quantitative tightening (QT) programs impact markets. “QT programs have, so far, been working as central banks intended,” Forbes writes. “At the same time, they have provided a small degree of support for central banks’ efforts to tighten financial conditions, with minimal impact on market functioning and liquidity. QT has worked in the opposite direction to quantitative easing, but the effects are much, much more muted.”

New York Times

Prof. Nathaniel Hendren and Prof. Justin Steil speak with New York Times reporter Jason DeParle about the difficulty in building affordable housing in opportunity-rich neighborhoods. “A lot has changed in American life over the past 50 years, but the hostility to affordable housing has remained surprisingly durable,” Steil explains. “Where you grow up matters a great deal for shaping your life outcomes,” Hendren adds.

The Hill

Writing for The Hill, Prof. Christopher Knittel and graduate student Kailin Graham emphasize the importance of ensuring the transition away from fossil fuels is an equitable process that provides support for vulnerable workers. “If we’re serious about achieving a truly just transition, far more federal policy action is needed,” they write.

The New York Times

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have provided an analysis of the successes and shortcomings of President Biden’s climate bill, reports Brad Plumer for The New York Times. The report says “the biggest obstacles facing renewable electricity are logistical,” writes Plumer. “Wind and solar are facing lengthy waits to connect the nation’s clogged electric grids, and it can take a decade or more to get permits for new high-voltage transmission lines and build them.”

USA Today

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found that the “U.S. is generally heading in the right direction to achieve its energy goals to combat climate change, but it could still face headwinds due to siting and permitting delays, backlogged electric grid connection requests and supply chain challenges,” reports Elizabeth Weise for USA Today.

Axios

Axios reporter Courtenay Brown spotlights a new report by researchers from MIT and the Brookings Institute that finds poorer counties in the U.S. with lower employment rates have, “attracted a large share of the hundreds of billions of dollars allocated for clean energy projects, semiconductor mega-factories and more.” Brian Deese, an Innovation Fellow at MIT, explains that: “Distressed communities are attracting new clean energy and semiconductor investment at roughly twice the rate of traditional private investment. If this trend continues, it has the potential to change the economic geography of the country and create economic opportunity in parts of this country that too many people have written off in the past.”  

Reuters

Reuters reporter Timothy Appell spotlights a new study by researchers from MIT and the Brookings Institution that finds, “a surge of factory building fueled by Biden administration investments in ‘strategic sectors’ such as clean energy and semiconductors has so far flowed disproportionately to U.S. counties with relatively distressed economies and notably has not tracked ‘Democratic geography.’”

Forbes

Prof. Ernest Moniz and his colleagues have designed a new consortium that plans to create an organized market for hydrogen, reports Llewellyn King for Forbes. This will allow hydrogen to become “a viable option in the pursuit of net-zero emissions,” writes King.