Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Thomas Kochan explores how workers, unions, CEOs and politicians can all draw lessons from the Market Basket protests in 2014. "The key lesson for workers and unions is to draw on customers and citizens as allies and sources of power," writes Kochan. "If workers’ demands make sense, customers and community members will support them."
Prof. Nathaniel Hendren speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Rachel Wolfe about the evolution of economic mobility in the United States. “It’s still a coin flip whether or not you’ll earn more than your parents, but mobility probably hit a record low in the early 2020s,” says Hendren.
Writing for The Boston Globe, President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif makes the case that “without strong research universities and the scientific and technological advances they discover and invent, the United States could not possibly keep up with China.” He emphasizes that “punishing universities financially for their failings — real and imagined — would be counterproductive. If anything, the China challenge demands that universities do more than they are already doing — and that they have the resources to do so.”
Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks with Bloomberg reporters Jonnelle Marte and Reade Pickert about potential Fed rate cuts. “The last few years have been a wake-up call,” Forbes said. “You want to do a framework review that is robust to many different economic circumstances.”
Writing for The Hill, graduate student Shomik Verma explores the potential impact of the Climate Superfund Act, a bill that would require “fossil fuel companies who have emitted more than 1 billion tons over the past 20 years to pay into a superfund for their climate damages.” “With the saturated field of climate policies nowadays, this unique bill has the potential to be truly impactful,” writes Verma. “We need to make sure it is.”
Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with New York Times reporter Austyn Gaffney about new research detailing the true impact of climate policies designed to reduce emissions. “Many of the technological tools that are needed to address climate change are now available,” says Trancik. “And ready to be adopted at scale because of a host of different types of policies that came before.”
Writing for Foreign Affairs, MIT Innovation Fellow Brian Deese proposes a Clean Energy Marshall Plan to combat climate change and renew U.S. leadership on a global stage, arguing this can be done in a way that promotes U.S. interests and supports aligned countries. “In this moment of domestic economic strength—stark against the backdrop of heightened competition, a fracturing world, and a raging climate crisis—the United States can do something generous for people across the globe in a way that benefits Americans,” writes Deese. “It should take that leap, not just because it is the morally right thing to do but also because it is the strategically necessary thing to do.”
In a letter to the editor of The Boston Globe, Prof. Emerita Lotte Bailyn underscores the importance of leaders and prominent public figures taking family leave. “As someone who has long studied the effect of employer policies and practices on the success of an enterprise, I know the extreme importance of a leader’s actions,” writes Bailyn. “What they model, not the words they say, has the strongest impact on the culture of an organization”
Research Scientist Eric Rosengren joins CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss recession fears and Fed rate cuts, pointing out the largely healthy economy likely means no cuts in the short term. “We're just not seeing much in the way of underlying economic data that would indicate that financial markets are actually signaling a problem,” Rosengren says. “There’s no obvious financial instability issue here and the economy continues to be doing reasonably well.”
Bloomberg’s David Westin talks with Prof. Kristin Forbes at the Aspen Economic Strategy Group meetings focused on monetary and fiscal policy. Despite progress in the inflation fight, "we as economists forget that this price of a basket of goods matters to people. Things are more expensive," she says.
In an essay for Project Syndicate, Prof. Simon Johnson underscores for the need for countries around the world to “make strategic investments in key technologies, to create more good jobs, and to stay ahead of increasingly aggressive geopolitical competitors.” Johnson emphasizes: “If you want more good jobs, invest in science, facilitate the commercialization of the technology that results from it, and make it easy for people to build companies where the product was invented.”
Prof. R. Scott Kemp and Principal Research Scientist Charles Forsberg speak with Verge reporter Justine Calma about the nuclear proliferation concerns raised by the higher concentrations of uranium used in next-generation nuclear reactors. “We need to make sure that we don’t get in front of ourselves here and make sure that all the security and safety provisions are in place first before we go off and start sending [high-assay low-enriched uranium] all around the country,” says Kemp.
Writing for The New York Times, Prof. Daron Acemoglu and University of Chicago Prof. James A. Robinson propose solutions to address growing distrust in democracy. “We need a new democratic social contract that people can believe in,” they write. “Democracy does not need to follow a majoritarian opinion on every topic, but it cannot sideline the views of the majority of the population, even on divisive subjects such as immigration.”
In an interview with The New York Times, Prof. Susan Solomon speaks about her latest book “Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do it Again,” which offers learnings from past environmental fights to affect future change. “People need to have some hope. We imagine that we never solve anything…but it’s really important to go back and look at how much we succeeded in the past and what are the common threads of those successes,” Solomon says.
Writing for Bloomberg, David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, argues that New York’s halted congestion pricing plan will deprive the state’s MTA of much needed revenue, underfunding maintenance and visible enhancement projects. “New York’s congestion pricing plan would have covered more than half the MTA’s $28 billion capital budget,” he explains. “For the moment, the MTA’s board must strike a precarious balance between politicians’ desire for splashy construction projects and the urgent but hidden needs for system upgrades.”