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December 4, 2024

Shifting Patterns of Social Interaction: Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through A.I.

Abstract We analyze changes in pedestrian behavior over a 30-year period in four urban public spaces located in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Building on William Whyte’s observational work from 1980, where he manually recorded pedestrian behaviors, we employ computer vision and deep learning techniques to examine video footage from 1979-80 and 2008-10. Our analysis…

December 3, 2024

How States Can Shake Up the Stagnant Higher Education Market

Artificial barriers to entry have been a feature of markets for millennia, from medieval guilds to modern occupational licenses. Though often defended on the basis of consumer protection, barriers which keep new providers of a good or service out of the market also serve to protect incumbent businesses, hamstring innovation, and increase prices. Such barriers…

December 3, 2024

The ‘Fentanyl Election’ Is Over. Now What?

Was 2024 the “fentanyl election”? A recent article in The New Yorker by Benjamin Wallace-Wells suggests that the effect of the drug crisis on certain communities made their residents more likely to vote for Donald Trump. Perhaps this was another so-called sleeper issue. Though voters didn’t mention it like they did the economy and democracy, the issue…

December 3, 2024

Avoiding an Unemployment Loan Bailout

Taxpayers in most states may have dodged a billion-dollar bullet on election day. That is, if the outcome had been different, liberal lawmakers would have been uniquely positioned to bail out California and New York unemployment benefit debts, and in the process shift large costs onto taxpayers in other states. All states levy payroll taxes…

December 2, 2024

The Pursuit of Happiness Starts with Families: A Conversation Between Brad Wilcox and Gov. Spencer Cox

Utah has been at the forefront of a national conversation about how to grow and strengthen families, thanks in part to the leadership of Gov. Spencer Cox. I recently invited Cox to speak at the University of Virginia about Utah’s initiatives that enable strong families, as well as the governor’s efforts to protect teens from…

December 2, 2024

Reforming State Authorization of Colleges to Boost Competition and Lower Tuition

Key Points Executive Summary Higher education suffers from barriers to entry. Though the ranks of students at traditional colleges have grown by 29 percent over the past three decades, the number of active institutions has declined. Four in five students today attend an institution that was founded before 1970, and virtually none attend a school…

December 2, 2024

Why Has Construction Productivity Stagnated? The Role of Land-Use Regulation

Abstract We document a Kuznets curve for construction productivity in 20th-century America. Homes built per construction worker remained stagnant between 1900 and 1940, boomed after World War II, and then plummeted after 1970. The productivity boom from 1940 to 1970 shows that nothing makes technological progress inherently impossible in construction. What stopped it? We present…

November 27, 2024

Finally, a Win for Working Men

Since the 1970s, working men, particularly those without college degrees, have experienced lower employment rates, increased social isolation and growing health risks. Today, we are starting to see early signs that this problem may be abating.   But lately, men have started going back to work. During most recessions, the male employment rate falls and never returns…

November 25, 2024

Don’t Write Off Workforce Pell Grants

Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon, a former administrator of the Small Business Administration, is a proponent of expanding Pell Grants to short-term workforce education programs. In a September op-ed, McMahon boosted the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act, which would allow students to use Pell Grants for high-quality workforce education programs as short as eight weeks in duration (the…

November 22, 2024

A Side Effect of the Booming Job Market: Wage Inequality Is Way Down

Lessons of the post-COVID economy. When voters tell you what they are concerned about, believe them. Exit polls from the presidential election the show that the economy ranked first among voters’ concerns at 32 percent, almost three times more than the next closest issue, immigration. A plurality of voters—45 percent—said that their financial situation was worse than…