Policy

"Rising inequality is highly correlated to unequal access to education," Piketty said in an address at MIT. "In the United States, 95 percent of those with parents at the highest income levels attend college, while only about 20 percent of the poorest do, research shows."

At MIT, Thomas Piketty calls for policies and collaborations to reduce income inequality

French economist was a keynote speaker at the 2018 World Economic History Congress.

August 9, 2018

President Reif urges “farsighted national strategy” to address China competition

New York Times op-ed by MIT president says a national focus on innovation and research is more effective than only playing defense on trade practices.

August 8, 2018

Computer scientists from MIT and IPRI propose a new cryptographic system to improve accountability of government surveillance while maintaining enough confidentiality for the police to do their jobs.

Holding law-enforcement accountable for electronic surveillance

CSAIL system encourages government transparency using cryptography on a public log of wiretap requests.

August 8, 2018

Bergquist was attracted to MIT for her doctoral studies because it integrated the study of environmental problems with urban studies, but also placed a strong emphasis on political science.

Environmental regulation in a polarized culture

Doctoral student Parrish Bergquist investigates how politics affects environmental decision-making.

July 24, 2018

Michele Bustamante, a postdoc in the MIT Materials Systems Laboratory, won a Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship for her research analyzing supply risks and cost dynamics for key metals in high technology.

Where economics and materials science meet

Postdoc Michele Bustamante wins Congressional Fellowship for her research analyzing supply risks and cost dynamics for key metals in high technology.

July 11, 2018

“Innovation is born of openness to futures that are not easily imaginable," says Caley Horan, assistant professor of history. "History reminds us that many ideas, institutions, and organizational structures that now seem natural and inevitable did not always exist. In doing so, it throws open the door to boundless possibility.”

3 Questions: Historian Caley Horan on the rise of private insurance in the U.S.

Assistant professor explores how risk sharing and mutual aid shifted to individual forms of protection.

July 3, 2018

“What we discovered is, very little [Medicare] money is spent on people who we know with high probability are going to die in a short amount of time,” says Amy Finkelstein, a professor in MIT’s Department of Economics and co-author of a paper in the journal Science.

The value of late-in-life health care spending

Study debunks notion that large chunks of Medicare go to futile end-of-life care.

June 28, 2018

An MIT study estimates the impact of a trade war between the U.S. and the rest of world when the U.S. alone does not comply with the Paris Agreement. The aim of such a trade war would be to compel the U.S. to meet its Paris pledge.

What is the likely outcome of a trade war between the U.S. and the rest of the world?

Study highlights economic losses for participating countries.

June 26, 2018

Bruno Verdini discusses strategies for natural resources negotiation with MIT Energy Initiative Communications Director Emily Dahl at a MITEI seminar.

3Q: Winning together in negotiation

Bruno Verdini, executive director of the MIT-Harvard Mexico Negotiation Program, discusses his award-winning research on negotiating for mutual gains.

June 21, 2018

Bruno Verdini explored the keys to successful high-stakes negotiations by interviewing dozens of people who worked together to settle long-running disputes between the United States and Mexico over shared natural resources in the Colorado River and the Gulf of Mexico.

Natural resource negotiations for mutual gains

Through research on U.S. - Mexico hydrocarbon drilling rights negotiation, Bruno Verdini provides insights on how to resolve conflicts through proactive collaboration.

June 21, 2018

When PhD student Tiziana Smith isn’t at her computer refining or running her models, she can be found organizing activities and initiatives to help her fellow graduate students find mentors and become leaders themselves.

How many people can China feed?

Graduate student Tiziana Smith studies links between water availability and crop yields in the world’s most populous country.

May 30, 2018

Abigail Krich, founder and president of Boreas Renewables, discusses New England's impending energy market transition from natural gas domination to a greater proliferation of renewables.

3 Questions: New England’s wholesale electricity markets

Boreas Renewables' Abigail Krich discusses the incompatibility of New England’s electricity market structure with achieving carbon emissions reduction goals.

May 23, 2018

“We really need to have some rational way of thinking about telemedicine across state boundaries as well as across national boundaries,” says Amar Gupta.

Removing health care barriers and boundaries

Through transformative use of telemedicine, researcher and instructor Amar Gupta hopes to achieve better, quicker, and less expensive health care for all.

May 22, 2018

A new study co-authored by an MIT political scientist shows that state policies in the U.S. from 1936 through 2014 have been responsive to public opinion — and have become even more aligned with it in recent decades.

People power

State-level policy in the U.S. is responsive to public opinion, study shows.

May 11, 2018

A workshop preceding the Make the Breast Pump Not Suck hackathon guided participants in team-building and brainstorming exercises. More than half the attendees were hackathon first-timers.

Addressing bias, inequality, and accessibility in breastfeeding

Make the Breast Pump Not Suck hackathon at the Media Lab emphasizes social and political issues over engineering.

May 4, 2018

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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