The medical response to COVID-19 was hampered in speed and effectiveness by obstacles to effective coordination across federal agencies, between local, state, and federal governments, and among public and private-sector organizations. Drawing on interviews with practitioners and open-source research, this report describes those obstacles and recommends policies and actions to help overcome them and improve our nation’s response to this pandemic as well as future biomedical crises.
Hoover Institution fellow David Brady discusses the lessons pollsters learned in the 2016 election and what to know about tracking election forecasts in 2020.
This is an essay on politics. Some of my most valued readers have expressed they don't enjoy my posts on politics. Fair enough, I'll be back soon with commentary on monetary policy. See you later.
Embark on a unique journey of discovery through the Pacific theater of World War II with Natale Bellantoni, a US Navy Seabee known as the battalion artist of the 78th, in this introductory story.
Promising to spend $2 trillion on climate over the next four years, U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden is taking a path similar to that of politicians from many other rich countries, vowing costly policies to help address global warming.
In its technical paper justifying the awards, the Nobel Committee points out a major problem with using taxes to fund government programs: taxation distorts. The term economists use is “deadweight loss,” a loss that is not offset by a gain to anyone. Economists have estimated that raising $1 in taxes doesn’t cost society only $1; it costs somewhere between $1.17 and $1.56. The extra 17 to 56 cents is deadweight loss.
Starting in 1996, I woke up early on an October morning and saw who won the Nobel Prize in economics. I had a deal with the Wall Street Journal that I would tell one of the editors within an hour so whether I knew enough about the winner(s) to write an op/ed that morning for the next day’s print edition.
August was the sixth anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the black teenager who was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. The incident, and the nationwide coverage it attracted, marked the beginning of a period of mass protests against police, which culminated (let’s hope) after the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this May.
The enormous impact of COVID-19 on the world has drawn comparisons with the first world war. Historian Niall Ferguson, for example, points to the financial panic, global reach, economic dislocation and popular alarm of both crises.
How might artificial intelligence and machine learning impact nuclear stability among the big powers? Is there an appetite in the United States for regulating the digital world? How should reporters cover disinformation campaigns? What can we do to better coordinate healthcare data nationwide?
