If there is any consensus in the debate over how to revitalize the American economy, it is over innovation. Innovation, we can all readily concur, is the only way for an advanced economy like the United States – which cannot grow by copying and imitating others – to continue to boost productivity and raise living standards. But understanding why useful innovations occur, and what if anything governments can do to foster them, quickly degenerates into a clash between free market absolutists and industrial policy aficionados. Read more »

We’ve all seen the headlines: American students are far from stellar performers on international tests. Whether it’s the OECD’s oft-cited gold-standard PISA test on math and reading, the TIMSS test on math and science, or the PIRLS test on reading, American students consistently score in the middle-of-the-pack among their peers in the rich world. Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, has called such mediocre results a “wake-up call” for urgent action to reform the U.S. education system. The suggested reforms are often inspired by the highest-performers on international tests, including Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Shanghai, and Finland. Read more »

Perhaps the most prized real estate at the annual State of the Union address is the first lady’s box, where, for over thirty years, persons of great distinction have been invited to sit and be recognized in the national spotlight. Foreign dignitaries, war heroes, renowned academics, innovators, and others of such esteem frequently receive the honor. Read more »

It has been more than five years since the last congressional effort at comprehensive immigration reform dissolved in acrimony. Since that time, the U.S. government has deported nearly 2 million unauthorized immigrants; a weaker economy and tougher border enforcement resulted in arrests of illegal crossers at the border with Mexico dropping from more than 850,000 to 327,000 annually, the lowest since the early 1970s; and skilled immigrants, facing long waits for green cards as well as the diminished opportunities of a weaker economy, are no longer coming to the United States in the numbers they once did. Read more »

U.S. students are now graduating from high school at the highest rate since good records began being kept in the mid-1970s, according to new data released today by the National Center for Education Statistics. Read more »

When he took over as San Francisco’s interim mayor in January 2011, Ed Lee seemed like just the reluctant warrior the city needed to tackle its fiscal woes. He hadn’t run for office since his bid for high school senior class president, and had no aspirations to break the forty-year trend when his caretaker mayorship expired the following January. “I didn’t care about future office, I just wanted to do what was right for the city,” he told me in a recent phone conversation. Read more »

MILAN – New technologies of various kinds, together with globalization, are powerfully affecting the range of employment options for individuals in advanced and developing countries alike – and at various levels of education. Technological innovations are not only reducing the number of routine jobs, but also causing changes in global supply chains and networks that result in the relocation of routine jobs – and, increasingly, non-routine jobs at multiple skill levels – in the tradable sector of many economies. Read more »