New Insights for Innovation Policy
The US economy has been suffering from weak productivity growth, business dynamism, and competition for the past several decades. The loss of a vibrant economy is even more concerning as the economy faces new challenges such as the transition to green energy that call for novel technological advancements. Reduced technological diffusion in the economy has ...
Seven Recent Developments in US Science Funding
Over the past century, scientific research and development (R&D) has fueled US economic and military might and propelled the country’s status as a global superpower. These investments have helped to launch not only the technologies that define modern life, including the internet, mobile and personal computing, and artificial intelligence, but also the healthcare advances that ...
Will Population Aging Push Us over a Fiscal Cliff?
The share of the US population age 65 and older is rising dramatically. In the year 2000, 12 percent of the population was over age 65; by 2050 that share will be 22 percent. Much of that aging has already occurred: in 2022, just over 17 percent of Americans are retirement age. Population aging is ...
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 ...
In Brief: Building Security in the Semiconductor Supply Chain
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 supply chains of this critical technology. In response, US policymakers have invested billions in the ...
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. ...
Melissa S. Kearney
MELISSA S. KEARNEY is the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland. She is also director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group; a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of MDRC and ...
Kaye Husbands Fealing
KAYE HUSBANDS FEALING is the former Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and former Chair of the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she currently holds the title professor. She is currently the Assistant Director of the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation ...