Papers

The COVID-19 public health crisis, the economic shock triggered by the pandemic, and public policy, business, and individual responses to the pandemic together have provoked the sharpest and fastest economic downturn in U.S. history. Wendy Edelberg and Jay Shambaugh discuss how the current crisis fits into historic context and what will be the long-lasting economic consequences. 

Improving labor productivity is important to sustain economic output and power long-run growth—yet productivity growth has generally declined over the past half century. Emily Moss, Ryan Nunn, and Jay Shambaugh consider explanations for the slowdown in productivity growth as well as the public policies that can help restore it.

How the government raises tax revenue has critical implications for economic prosperity. Moss, Nunn, and Shambaugh provide a framework for assessing various tax policies and their implications for growth and inequality.

In this strategy paper, The Hamilton Project explores the decline in U.S. LFPR as well as patterns by age, gender, race, and education. We then assess potential explanations and describe numerous Hamilton Project policy proposals that would raise labor force participation.

Automatic stabilizers are designed to expand during an economic downturn and contract during an expansion—providing timely and temporary fiscal stimulus. Boushey, Nunn, O’Donnell, and Shambaugh assess the various policy responses available to the federal government and argues that when well designed, automatic stabilizers can be an effective part of the policy tool kit for responding to recessions. 

Louise Sheiner and Michael Ng investigate the cyclicality of fiscal policy over the past 40 years, finding that fiscal policy has been increasingly countercyclical, with automatic stabilizers providing roughly half the stabilization. By contrast, state fiscal policy has been mildly procyclical. 

In this framing paper, Ryan Nunn, Jimmy O'Donnell, and Jay Shambaugh evaluate the potential labor market impacts of several employment support policies, with particular attention devoted to a federal job guarantee. They conclude that while a job guarantee could lift employment rates and incomes for many participants, its effects on the currently employed and those out of the labor force are very uncertain.

Ryan Nunn, Jana Parsons, and Jay Shambaugh investigate the factors that have created concentrated prosperity in the United States while leaving many places behind. They explore how economic activity has shifted, as well as the factors that are associated with success or failure for particular places.

Bradley Hardy, Trevon Logan, and John Parman describe the legacy of structural racism and its influence on economic outcomes for people and places today, outlining the role it should play in informing policy to improve economic conditions in lagging U.S. communities.

In this Hamilton Project strategy paper, Lauren Bauer,  Patrick Liu, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, and Jay Shambaugh articulate a framework for states as they oversee implementation of statewide accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act and describe how states differ in their approaches. The authors present novel analyses of the factors at the school and student levels that relate to chronic absenteeism and describe evidence-based strategies for schools as they work to reduce rates of chronic absence among students.

Human capital is central to raising wages. This framing paper describes trends in human capital investment and educational attainment, and reviews the evidence of wage returns to educational attainment and to early childhood education, K-12 education, postsecondary education, and workforce development. 

Wages have stagnated in recent decades for typical workers. While a number of economic, policy, and technological developments bear some responsibility, economists have grown increasingly concerned that declining dynamism is an important cause. Declining dynamism may suggest a role for public policy in establishing the conditions for workers to successfully climb the job ladder.

While women’s labor force participation has increased substantially in the U.S. over the second half of the 20th century, this growth has stagnated and reversed since 2000. This pattern persists across women of varying races and ethnicities, educational backgrounds, ages, and marital statuses, and for women with and without children alike. Black, Schanzenbach, and Breitwieser note that this decline seems to be moving directly against the trends observed in other major OECD economies. 

The gap between wages of men and women has fallen over the past several decades, reflecting women’s economic progress. Successive generations of women have obtained more education and received higher wages, entering a broader range of occupations that had previously been male-dominated. However, a significant gender wage gap remains. Nunn and Mumford point out that occupational segregation, differences in academic specialization, difficulty in balancing work and household responsibilities, and wage discrimination—among many other factors—likely underlie much of the remaining gender wage gap.

This paper seeks to provide an economic framework for evaluating infrastructure investments and their methods of funding and finance. Why should we invest in infrastructure, what projects should be selected, who should decide, and how should those investments be paid for are all questions that can be better answered with the help of sound economic theory and evidence.

In this strategy paper, The Hamilton Project highlights rates of chronic absenteeism in elementary, middle and high schools throughout the United States. The interactive map illustrates THP’s research that shows that across the nation and in every state, rates of chronic absenteeism meaningfully differentiate between schools. This means that rates of chronic absenteeism are widely distributed across schools and that the lowest performing schools are clearly identifiable. Accordingly, an accompanying Hamilton Project report recommends the selection of chronic absenteeism when states choose a new measure of school accountability as mandated under the recently enacted federal education law. 

During the past 100 years, life expectancy at birth has increased by about 25 years in the United States. However, certain groups—notably older whites and low-income Americans—find their mortality rates either stagnating or rising in recent years. In a new framing paper, The Hamilton Project examines the widening gap in life expectancy and explores policy reforms aimed at extending life expectancy gains for more Americans.

In this framing paper, The Hamilton Project describes the broader economic context of contingent employer–employee relationships and where the emerging on-demand gig economy fits in this context. It also highlights the regulatory and measurement gaps that need to be resolved.

The United States has experienced a fairly steady recovery since the Great Recession—fifty-three consecutive months of positive job creation as of this writing—but there is room for continued improvement.This framing memo from The Hamilton Project discusses three proposals from prominent scholars, each of which addresses a specific challenge in a potentially cost-effective way to address both cyclical and longer-term labor market challenges and, suggests ways to help workers.

Recent developments in technology, including the proliferation of smart machines, networked communication, and digitization, have the potential to transform the economy in groundbreaking ways. In this framing paper, The Hamilton Project explores the debate about how computerization and machines might change the future of work and the economy, and what challenges and opportunities this presents for public policy.

In this framing paper, The Hamilton Project highlights the economic significance of U.S. fisheries, describes the current landscape of the industry and typical management practices, and explains the “tragedy of the commons” challenge facing this natural resource. The Project also explores possible approaches for improving the economic and ecological sustainability of U.S. fisheries by establishing better-defined property rights as an alternative to traditional management systems.

The Hamilton Project highlights the disproportionate burden of crime and incarceration on America’s poor. For too many Americans, that means living in a community in which opportunities are limited, and fear of violence has shaped daily lives and altered childhoods.

In a new policy memo, The Hamilton Project highlights four policy challenges hampering the economic potential of wireless spectrum and opportunities to address these challenges through innovative, evidence-driven approaches to reform.

Although innovation has revolutionized the American economy as a whole over the last century, the education sector has benefitted relatively little from these advances.In a forthcoming paper, The Hamilton Project compares the nation’s total expenditures on research and development by sector and finds spending on education lags behind other areas such as pharmaceuticals and medicine.

This Hamilton Project framing paper summarizes recent changes in the energy sector, and lays out five principles for shaping energy and environmental policy.

The Hamilton Project provides background information on the state of America’s immigration system, and discusses the economic benefits of reforming the system.

Amid the Great Recession and rapid technological changes, both workers with less education and workers who have been displaced from long-tenured jobs face challenges because they lack the particular skills that employers demand for good-paying jobs. In a new Hamilton Project strategy paper, Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney address the importance of developing workers’ skills through training and workforce development programs, and examine newly available evidence on policies that boost job opportunities and wages.

For decades, education has boosted U.S. productivity and earnings, forged a path out of poverty for many families, helped disadvantaged students narrow the learning gap with their peers, and developed a workforce that continues to be among the most productive and innovative on Earth. However, in recent years educational attainment and performance have stagnated. In this strategy paper, The Hamilton Project provides a dual-track approach to improving educational outcomes for K-12 students by addressing structural barriers and implementing short-term cost-effective reforms to improve student performance.

America’s energy choices are built on the prices we see at the pump and our utility bills. Yet these prices mask the social costs arising from those energy choices, including shorter lives, higher health care expenses, a changing climate, and weakened national security. Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney provide four principles for reforming America’s energy policies to help level the playing field for all energy sources — moving away from a system that favors energy sources with lower prices at the pump but higher costs to society through health impacts and our ongoing reliance on foreign oil.

Confronting near-term budget challenges, state and local governments are under tremendous pressure to focus on immediate needs at the expense of long-term investments. Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney highlight four policy principles for state and local governments with an emphasis on the importance of infrastructure investments for economic growth and prosperity.

In this paper, the Center for American Progress (CAP) and The Hamilton Project (THP) outline three proposals to help address the long-run imperative of creating jobs and improving wages in the United States.

When hit by recessions or other economic shocks, some communities have persistently low rates of economic growth that cause them to fall behind the rest of the country. The recovery period for these distressed communities is longer and more painful than necessary. To address this situation, The Hamilton Project proposes a three-pronged approach: attract businesses to distressed areas, invest in displaced workers, and match workers to jobs.

This paper argues that we must confront the challenges that pose a greater risk to our long-run prosperity than the Great Recession. America’s future growth requires reprioritizing expenditures toward increasing workforce productivity, innovation and infrastructure, savings, and government effectiveness.

Today, too many Americans are not fully sharing in our nation’s prosperity. This paper outlines the ways in which promoting economic growth, broad-based participation in growth, and economic security can be mutually reinforcing policy objectives.

Manasi Deshpande and Douglas W. Elmendorf argue that America now has the opportunity to channel public concern and frustration into a national infrastructure strategy that promotes infrastructure as a central component of long-term, broadly shared growth.

Jason Furman discusses the issue of missing markets for both societal and individual risk, highlighting reasons for the absence of these markets and proposing solutions to enable the development of new markets.

The livelihoods and living standards of many Americans are at stake in any discussion about stimulus. This paper considers several key questions on stimulus and provides principles and examples for effective implementation.

This paper offers a strategy to reduce poverty and strengthen growth across the income spectrum by helping people find jobs, investing in human capital, and creating a strong social safety net.

This paper presents a strategy for addressing climate change and promoting energy security that includes pricing carbon and oil, investing in basic research on energy technologies, and engaging with other major emitting nations.

This paper examines the interrelated problems of uninsurance and expensive or ineffective care in the American healthcare system. Universal insurance would eliminate uncompensated cost shifts and expand risk pooling and reduce the fragmentation of financing.

The dynamic forces of technological change, financial innovation, and globalization present new challenges for progressive taxation. This strategy paper offers several broad principles that reflect the new challenges facing our tax system in the 21st Century.

To better secure the benefits of education, this paper outlines an evidence-based education strategy that emphasizes new investments in some areas (such as early education) and structural reforms in others (such as the teacher tenure system).

This strategy paper argues that maintaining our nation's economic leadership in the world and promoting broad-based growth at home will require effective policies to support research, innovation, and access to advanced information and telecommunications technologies.

American families face new economic risks even as our social safety net is fraying. This paper outlines a strategy for providing a basic level of economic security that is beneficial for families and for national economic growth.

This framing paper articulates a philosophy of embracing international competition while investing in workers and market-friendly insurance. The underlying goal is to boost overall productivity while also sharing more broadly both the benefits and costs of trade.

Americans’ long-held belief that education and hard work advances each generation’ outlook has provided a powerful incentive for industrious activity, spurring the unprecedented economic growth that the United States has enjoyed for more than two centuries. Yet the fundamental principle that all citizens should have an opportunity to succeed is at risk today because the nation is neither paying its way nor investing adequately in its future. The Hamilton Project at Brookings advances innovative policy ideas for improving our nation’s economic policy.