Business and Government

BY ROBERT REYNOLDS Policy students interested in nudging must run experiments. Yet, rigorous experiments require substantial time, funding, and expert guidance. Because most students do not have this, behavioral enthusiasts rarely complete experiments while in policy school. This should change. So, how can policy students do this without succumbing to the difficulties of professional experiments? […]

BY EDWARD CUIPA On 16 December 2015, the US Federal Reserve announced the first increase in the federal funds rate in almost a decade, hiking the target benchmark rate range by 0.25 percentage points to 0.25–0.50 percentage points.[i] The move impacts economic growth because the federal funds rate sets the rate at which banks can […]

Most Australians today accept that the mining boom of the mid-to late 2000s, which reshaped the country, is largely over. But an overlooked segment of history is that the end of the stunning run in bulk commodity prices came as a rapid and unexpected shock to most of the nation. Despite predictions of weaker Chinese […]

BY PAUL-ADRIEN HYPPOLITE AND NINA ROUSSILLE The 12 July 2015 Euro Area summit ended with a last minute agreement that avoided an imminent Greek exit from the Eurozone (“Grexit”).[i] Even before engaging talks about the third bailout program in 2015, the Greek government had accepted several prior bailouts with accompanying conditions negotiated with their European […]

BY KAVI PATEL Democrats added a $15 federal minimum wage to their platform before the Democratic National Convention at a time when the minimum wage debate is a hot topic and the “Fight for 15” Movement has already been successful in California and New York.  Advocates of an increase in the minimum wage argue that it […]

BY ANDREAS WESTGAARD For years, the Republican Party’s foundation has solidly rested on a three-legged stool of social conservatism, interventionist foreign policy, and fiscal moderation. Remarkably, the current Republican nominee for president, Donald J. Trump, does not espouse any of these values, deviating from what the Reagan Revolution set in stone more than three decades […]

BY VANESSA CALDER The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has promulgated a new rule that requires equal housing outcomes in an attempt to clarify and give teeth to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which requires racial groups be given equal access to housing. HUD’s “Duty to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing” requires […]

BY FUAD HUSEYNOV The World Bank estimates the current demand for infrastructure investment in emerging and developing countries at above $1 trillion a year as of 2015. Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank estimates a need for almost $169 billion in Central Asia alone from 2010-2020, of which $92 billion is needed for the development of […]

BY ROBERT REYNOLDS Nudging—the application of behavioral insights to public policy interventions—is among today’s fastest growing public policy fields. In the last few years, organizations from the White House to Google to the World Bank have launched behavioral science teams tasked with running randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that identify powerful nudges. During this time, Kennedy […]

Listen Here! Many consider Secretary Julian Castro the most successful Latino in U.S. politics. In 2012, as the Mayor of San Antonio, Secretary Castro became the first Latino to deliver the key note speech at a Democratic National Convention. Now, he is the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Many experts speculate that […]

BY MARINA ZHAVORONKOVA Last year, Netflix made headlines by allowing all employees up to a year of parental leave. In March, Salesforce adjusted the salaries of its employees to the tune of three million dollars to ensure salary equity across genders. Year after year, companies that fall on Fortune or Business Insider’s lists of “best […]

BY KARL T. MUTH AND KATHERYN R. DEVELVIS What sugar we see in candies and packets at restaurants pales in comparison to that which we do not see in processed foods and drinks. Likewise, the prices we pay for sugar at the grocer’s counter are only the tip of the iceberg compared to the camouflaged […]