The Economic Case for Smart Investing in America’s Youth
The United States spends a relatively small sum on children, both on a per capita basis and as a share of all spending. In 2019, the federal government spent an estimated $5,595 per child on programs benefiting children under 18, compared to $29,189 per elderly American on entitlement programs alone—a gap that remains wide even ...
Manufacturing Resilience: The US Drive to Reorder Global Supply Chains
Global supply chains—the network through which products and services move from initial producers to final consumers—have become increasingly complex over the past several decades. Recent disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the threat of further interruptions from rising geopolitical risks, have exposed the fragility of today’s supply chains. To build more resilient networks, ...
Where Is China’s Economy Headed?
The arc of the Chinese economy over the next 10 to 15 years will depend on three sets of forces, each of which interacts with the others: (1) Domestically, the internal political economy will determine the relationship between the state and the market. (2) Externally, the relationship between China as a nation and the US-led ...
Aspen Economic Strategy Group Releases 2023 Annual Policy Volume: Building a More Resilient US Economy
Washington, DC, November 8, 2023 – The Aspen Economic Strategy Group (AESG) today released its sixth annual policy volume, Building a More Resilient US Economy. The book’s publication comes as the US faces historically high levels of debt that threaten the resiliency of the nation’s economy, including the ability to invest in key priorities and ...
Aspen Economic Strategy Group Welcomes Five New Members
WASHINGTON, DC, JANUARY 22, 2024 – The Aspen Economic Strategy Group (AESG) today announced five new members have joined the sixty-five-member, bipartisan group of distinguished leaders and thinkers who share the goal of promoting evidence-based solutions to significant challenges confronting the American economy. Established in 2017 and co-chaired by former U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury ...
In Brief: The Recent Rise in US Labor Productivity
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 2.9 percent pace seen during the country’s last productivity surge in the 1990s. While the ...
Protectionism is Failing and Wrongheaded: An Evaluation of the Post-2017 Shift toward Trade Wars and Industrial Policy
This paper evaluates the shift towards increasingly protectionist and nationalist policies carried out by the past two presidential administrations. In this paper, Michael Strain argues that the turn to such economic policies has not only been ineffective by its own standards, failing to raise employment and reduce America’s reliance on China, but also is more ...
Technological Disruption in the US Labor Market
DAVID DEMING, CHRISTOPHER ONG, LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS This paper explores past episodes of technological disruption in the US labor market, with the goal of learning lessons about the likely future impact of artificial intelligence (AI). The authors measure changes in the structure of the US labor market going back over a century in two ways. ...
Introduction: Strengthening America’s Economic Dynamism
Global tensions and domestic discontent are driving a new era of economic policymaking. Leaders in both parties are turning away from free-market principles and endorsing an increase in protectionist trade policies and more active government-directed industrial policy. Further, these disruptions come when the country’s economic and political landscapes face systemic difficulties including limited state capacity ...