Commentary

Confusion about college pricing is longstanding and persistent. Such confusion stems from the gap between the full cost of attendance, or “sticker price,” and the lower net amount that many students pay after receiving need-based or merit-based financial aid awards....

BRIEFLY Semiconductors are the building blocks of almost every modern technology, from dishwashers to smartphones to javelin missiles. Shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with rising geopolitical tensions in the region where most chips are produced, have highlighted the fragile...

BRIEFLY US labor productivity has enjoyed a period of renewed growth over the past year, interrupting a nearly twenty-year decline: the 2.7 percent productivity growth in 2023 outpaces the 1.5 percent annual average since 2004, and it nearly matches the...

BRIEFLY The COVID-19 pandemic created not only a public health emergency but a youth education crisis as well. Decades of progress in math and reading among America’s students were wiped away in two years. The federal government passed three rounds...

BRIEFLY: Children in the US are far less likely to be raised in two-parent families today than they were in prior decades, a shift Aspen Economic Strategy Group (AESG) director Melissa Kearney explores in her new book, The Two-Parent Privilege....

BRIEFLY… High-stakes negotiations over the debt limit center on ways to bring government spending more in line with government revenues. The political contours of the debate have excluded cuts to Social Security and Medicare from consideration, as well as the...

BRIEFLY… College enrollment in the US declined among recent high school graduates in the past couple of years, even as the economic returns to a college degree remain substantial – see this previous IN BREIF. In this post, we show...

IN BRIEF COVID-related disruptions coupled with a tight labor market have led to a historic decline in college enrollment of recent high school graduates over the past three years. This drop, however, comes as the earnings premium for a college...

Editor’s note: The Aspen Economic Strategy Group is pleased to welcome Luke Pardue, an economist at the payroll and HR platform Gusto, as an AESG Fellow. Luke obtained his PhD in economics from the University of Maryland and previously worked...