2026-01-30
Critical comment on ‘Does Rent Control Turn Tenants Into NIMBYs?’ - How does rent regulation affect incumbent resident outlooks on housing growth? Two common intuitions have opposite signs: Maybe rent regulation makes re…
Assessing the Cost of Impact Fees on Affordable Housing: An Analysis of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Projects in California - Housing policy watchers may be familiar with the RAND report on how Californian multifamily d…
A geographical analysis of electricity prices published this week points out the fragmented nature of the affordability crisis. 2019-2025 price increases varied widely by state, with increases in California and the broad…
Much of NEPA’s power to slow down project timelines comes from the lawsuits it enables. Litigation doesn’t just slow down projects directly - it also incentivizes agencies to spend time “bulletproofing” their environment…
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are meant to protect research participants, but today their fragmented standards often create needless delays. In a new piece for the Institute for Progress, Ruxandra Teslo argues that …
Most discussions of health care in the US focus on the consumer or demand side: how do we lower drug prices for patients? How do we help the 8 percent of Americans lacking health insurance? How do we make it easier for p…
When drugs lose patent protection, the incentive for large-scale clinical trials of new indications dries up. A recent working paper estimates that hundreds of new uses for existing drugs have gone undeveloped as a resul…
Last week’s science appropriations news was encouraging, but a Nature feature this week documents the damage done over the last year: almost 8,000 grants were terminated or frozen (2,600 of which have not been reinstated…
Finally, let’s zoom out to a big question: is progress slower than it could be, because too many people don’t believe progress is possible? I’ve wondered about this for awhile; in 2024 I wrote about the decline in positi…