Vance, who has previously likened abortion to murder, spent some of his time outright flaunting his support for a national abortion ban for cameras, attempting to frame himself as a flexible moderate on the issue rather than a politician who in 2023 described the procedure’s near-total restriction as a “minimum national standard.” Language on Vance’s […]
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People around the globe often depend on informal financial arrangements, borrowing and lending money through social networks. Understanding this sheds light on local economies and helps fight poverty. Now, a study co-authored by an MIT economist illuminates a striking case of informal finance: In East Africa, money moves in very different patterns depending on whether […]
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Trump’s tariff means you can raise the price of your vehicles to $16,000 and not lose any market share. However, the Trump tariff doesn’t apply to you since you are a domestic carmaker. That means you will collect not $1,000 profit per car but $7,000, all paid by your customers. But because profit maximization is […]
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“So this woman is fine with his plan to take custody of the children from parents who won’t want them to chop off their body parts and put them in Minnesota courts’ custody so the body parts can be chopped off and they can be sterilized,” Kelly ranted, echoing Trump’s recent baseless lies about “transgender […]
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“It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that, because, look, childcare is childcare. It’s something you know you have to have it, in this country you have to have it,” Trump’s answer began, before he went off on a tangent about economic […]
Read MoreCharging stations for electric vehicles are essential for cleaning up the transportation sector. A new study by MIT researchers suggests they’re good for business, too. The study found that, in California, opening a charging station boosted annual spending at each nearby business by an average of about $1,500 in 2019 and about $400 between January […]
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How do you measure the value of an economic policy? Of an aid organization’s programming? For Saeed Miganeh, who completed an MITx MicroMasters in Data, Economics, and Development Policy and is now enrolled in MIT’s master’s program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP), these are key questions he is determined to answer. “Enrolling at MIT fed […]
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Since President Biden withdrew from the 2024 election last month and Harris took on the Democratic nomination, Harris’s campaign has not been heavy on specific policies. This is one of the first, if not the first, detailed plans the campaign has released. Not only does it continue Biden’s policy of economic intervention, it goes much […]
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Last week, Musk sued the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a group of advertisers, media agencies, and platforms that focus on safety in media and technology. The lawsuit also targets the parent organization of GARM, the World Federation of Advertisers, and four of its member companies: Orsted, Unilever, CVS Health, and Mars. Musk appears to […]
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When the last short video ended, no one spoke for a long moment. Seeming to mistake embarrassed silence for deep emotion, an Ernst & Young employee gazed compassionately into our eyes. After some desultory conversation, people trickled out of the exhibit, and I chatted with Ernst & Young’s Gareth Jenkins, head of “Creative and Proposition.” I […]
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When the last short video ended, no one spoke for a long moment. Seeming to mistake embarrassed silence for deep emotion, an Ernst & Young employee gazed compassionately into our eyes. After some desultory conversation, people trickled out of the exhibit, and I chatted with Ernst & Young’s Gareth Jenkins, head of “Creative and Proposition.” I […]
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Some people think the world is wildly unpredictable, and are glad insurance can handle the risk and uncertainty they face. Other people believe their destiny is written in the stars, and consult a daily horoscope to reveal what is in store for them. Either way, Caley Horan has the history of these things covered. Horan, […]
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Dean Agustín Rayo and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences recently welcomed nine new professors to the MIT community. They arrive with diverse backgrounds and vast knowledge in their areas of research. Sonya Atalay joins the Anthropology Section as a professor. She is a public anthropologist and archaeologist who studies Indigenous science protocols, […]
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J-PAL North America, a regional office of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), will significantly expand its work to conduct rigorous research and strengthen evidence-based policymaking due to a new grant from long-time supporter and collaborator Arnold Ventures. With Arnold Ventures’ new eight-figure grant over seven years, J-PAL North America aims to: substantially expand […]
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It’s one of the paradoxes of economic development: Many countries currently offer large subsidies to their industrial fishing fleets, even though the harms of overfishing are well-known. Governments might be willing to end this practice, if they saw that its costs outweighed its benefits. But each country, acting individually, faces an incentive to keep subsidies […]
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Joe Biden is the first American president to repudiate neoliberalism since Reagan adopted it and imposed it on America in 1980, writing Nafta, creating the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, gutting unions, defunding education, blocking enforcement of antitrust laws, and cutting taxes on the morbidly rich. Kamala Harris promises to continue Biden’s return to the […]
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MIT’s Laboratory for Economic Analysis and Design (LEAD) has been awarded a 400,000-euro grant from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, a German service provider focused on international cooperation for sustainable development and international education. The grant aims to create knowledge sharing opportunities for central bank leaders and help low- and middle-income countries […]
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One thing that makes large language models (LLMs) so powerful is the diversity of tasks to which they can be applied. The same machine-learning model that can help a graduate student draft an email could also aid a clinician in diagnosing cancer. However, the wide applicability of these models also makes them challenging to evaluate […]
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The Supreme Court’s ruling on this case will allow cities and states to avoid the offer of shelter entirely if they so choose and offers one solution to homelessness: punishment. As Sotomayor wrote, imposing fines and jailing individuals is not a solution. In her dissent, which she read from the bench, the justice described a […]
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After the 2022 midterms, Lake and her allies baselessly insisted that Richer had been responsible for her loss, after Maricopa County had some issues with the tabulator machines, although similar issues were reported in the county where Lake actually won. In 2023, Richer filed a defamation lawsuit against Lake, who admitted that all of Richer’s […]
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After the 2022 midterms, Lake and her allies baselessly insisted that Richer had been responsible for her loss, after Maricopa County had some issues with the tabulator machines, although similar issues were reported in the county where Lake actually won. In 2023, Richer filed a defamation lawsuit against Lake, who admitted that all of Richer’s […]
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After the 2022 midterms, Lake and her allies baselessly insisted that Richer had been responsible for her loss, after Maricopa County had some issues with the tabulator machines, although similar issues were reported in the county where Lake actually won. In 2023, Richer filed a defamation lawsuit against Lake, who admitted that all of Richer’s […]
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The Department of Economics has announced David Autor as the inaugural holder of the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professorship in Economics, effective July 1. The endowed chair is made possible by the generosity of Daniel and Gail Rubinfeld. Daniel Rubinfeld SM ’68, PhD ’72 is the Robert L. Bridges Professor of Law and professor […]
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Congress tried to revive the Civil War income tax in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. It took a constitutional amendment (proposed in 1909 by a Republican, President William Howard Taft!) to bring back the income tax. When re-introduced in 1913, it was very low, with brackets of 1 percent and 6 percent, […]
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The GOP was captured by the morbidly rich in the 1880s and has been dancing to their tune ever since, regularly throwing bones to bigots, religious zealots, woman haters, and gun nuts to get enough votes to hold power. Ever since that era, their main focus has been to increase the wealth of the morbidly […]
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A trip to Ghana changed Sofia Martinez Galvez’s life. In 2021, she volunteered at a nonprofit that provides technology and digital literacy training to people in the West African country. As she was setting up computers and connecting cables, Martinez SM ʼ23 witnessed extreme poverty. The experience was transformative. That same year, she left her […]
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When you read about a new study, you may wonder: How accurate are these results? MIT economist Isaiah Andrews PhD ’14 often asks that as well, especially about social sciences research. Unlike most of us, though, Andrews’ job involves answering that question. Andrews, a professor in MIT’s Department of Economics, is an expert in econometrics, […]
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In less than a decade, MIT economist Namrata Kala has produced a corpus of work too rich, inventive, and diverse to be easily summarized. Let’s try anyway. Kala, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, often studies environmental problems and their effects on workers and firms, with implications for government policy, corporate […]
Read MoreImagine a world in which some important decision — a judge’s sentencing recommendation, a child’s treatment protocol, which person or business should receive a loan — was made more reliable because a well-designed algorithm helped a key decision-maker arrive at a better choice. A new MIT economics course is investigating these interesting possibilities. Class 14.163 […]
Read MoreMIT has again been named the world’s top university by the QS World University Rankings, which were announced today. This is the 13th year in a row MIT has received this distinction. The full 2025 edition of the rankings — published by Quacquarelli Symonds, an organization specializing in education and study abroad — can be […]
Read MoreThe Fannie and John Hertz Foundation announced that it has awarded fellowships to 10 PhD students with ties to MIT. The prestigious award provides each recipient with five years of doctoral-level research funding (up to a total of $250,000), which allows them the flexibility and autonomy to pursue their own innovative ideas. Fellows also receive lifelong […]
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