Ep. 77: The political power of historical narratives
Release Date: 07/31/2024
Ep. 93: Technological spillovers
AEA Research Highlights
The launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in October 1957 led to a geopolitical crisis that reshaped American science policy. Within months, Congress established NASA, and by 1961, President Kennedy committed the nation to landing a man on the moon before the decade's end. The resulting investment was massive, and the program still serves as a model of government spending for advocates of public R&D. In a , authors and question whether the space race program succeeded as an economic policy that boosted economic growth and productivity. To estimate the space program's effects...
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Ep. 92: Housing supply skepticism
AEA Research Highlights
Most Americans that housing costs are too high, often blaming developers and landlords. Many feel that the problem can be solved with price controls, development restrictions, and mandates on providing below-market-rate units. But these ideas are at odds with standard economic policy prescriptions, which suggest that the way to bring down costs is by increasing the housing supply. In a , authors , , explore how the public thinks about housing markets through surveys of thousands of urban and suburban residents. They found that while people understand supply and demand in markets...
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Ep. 91: Reviewing residential segregation
AEA Research Highlights
Despite decades of civil rights legislation, many Black and White Americans, as well as other minorities, continue to live in racially homogeneous neighborhoods, with significant implications for access to quality schools, jobs, healthcare, and economic opportunities. In a , authors and examine the complexities of measuring residential segregation, what causes segregation to persist, and why it matters so much for economic outcomes. Their work challenges conventional narratives about US segregation and offers a framework for understanding how residential patterns continue to shape...
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Ep. 90: Understanding the US net foreign asset position
AEA Research Highlights
For decades, the United States enjoyed what some called an exorbitant privilege—the ability to spend more than it earned without accumulating much debt to the rest of the world. But that privilege has ended. In a , authors , , and found that the United States started accumulating significant liabilities to foreigners after the Great Recession. The researchers say that a surge in the value of US corporations relative to companies in other countries is the driver of this development. Due to large international capital flows in recent decades, foreign investors now own about 40...
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Ep. 89: Measuring US income inequality
AEA Research Highlights
US household income has significantly, but much of that growth seems to be at the very top of the distribution. Just how much inequality has increased and why it is growing is a topic of debate among economists. Part of the challenge lies in a seemingly basic question: what exactly counts as income? In a , author disentangles the notions of income that economists frequently use and helps pinpoint what's really behind the rise in inequality. Gomez recently spoke with Tyler Smith about defining income, recent patterns in income inequality, and the best tools for reducing inequality....
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Ep. 88: Understanding international approaches to drug pricing
AEA Research Highlights
Drug prices have become a hot-button issue in the United States, with across the agreeing that American consumers pay too much for prescription medications. But bringing down drug prices raises fundamental economic challenges that affect innovation, access, and healthcare costs worldwide. In a , author examines how different countries approach pharmaceutical pricing regulation and the lessons to be learned from international experience. Her work reveals that while the United States does pay significantly higher prices for drugs, the story is more nuanced than a simple comparison...
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Ep. 87: The cultural roots of rebellion
AEA Research Highlights
Civil conflict has plagued much of Africa, with ethnically diverse countries experiencing particularly high rates of violence. Yet within these nations, patterns vary, leading to questions of why some groups rebel while others do not and why a given group rebels at certain times but not at other times. In a , author untangles the factors that drive groups to rebel against their central government. She shows that when ethnicities become more culturally distant from those in power, their likelihood of engaging in civil conflict increases significantly. Her research suggests that...
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Ep. 86: Reexamining air quality regulations
AEA Research Highlights
The Clean Air Act has been an essential tool for reducing air pollution in the United States. But standard estimation methods may overstate its impact, according to a . Authors and reexamined the 2005 regulations targeting fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and found that improvements in air quality were closer to a 3 percent reduction in pollutants rather than the 10 percent suggested by conventional methods. However, they also found that the benefits from cleaner air may be larger than previous estimates suggested. Sager and Singer recently spoke with Tyler Smith about methods for...
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Ep. 85: America’s public safety net
AEA Research Highlights
The patchwork nature of America's public safety net has evolved over centuries, shaped by political winds and changing views on poverty. Understanding this complicated history may help shed light on the core tensions that continue to define debates about who deserves assistance and how it should be provided. In a , author explored how programs targeted at people with low incomes expanded from meager, local support in colonial times to the large-scale programs of today. He draws a distinction between two parallel systems: means-tested programs targeted specifically at low-income Americans...
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Ep. 84: Media salience and polarization
AEA Research Highlights
info_outlineIn 2005, Austria’s most prominent far-right party proclaimed a “Third Turkish Siege of Vienna.” The campaign warned voters that, like their ancestors who were almost overrun by the Ottoman Empire four centuries ago, they were being culturally invaded by Muslims. The campaigners hoped to use long-past historical events to shape the behavior and sentiments of modern-day voters. But did it work?
The strategy sparked a surge in the far-right’s vote share and a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment, according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. The authors, Christian Ochsner and Felix Roesel, studied areas with ties to the historical trauma of the Sieges of Vienna and explained how political innovators reinvigorated latent xenophobic narratives that mobilized voters.
Ochsner recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the recent political environment in Austria, the use of historical parallels, and the impact on Muslim minorities.