Economic Studies Media Room


Get press releases, resources for media and view recent coverage of Brookings Economic Studies Program.

For media inquires, contact:
DJ Nordquist
Director of Communications and Management
Send E-mail

Subscribe, and receive immediate updates on new Economic Studies content - including research, events and testimony.

Economic Studies News

Multimedia

Browse Economic Studies videos »

Past Events

A Year in Turmoil: An Address By Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
September 15, 2009

The Budget, the Deficit, the Future
July 8, 2009

The Changing Fortunes of the U.S. Workforce: What's Driving Income Inequality
June 23, 2009

View all Events

In the News: November

Business and Finance

  • Jobs gloom, with glimmers: Unemployment in America
    November 12, 2009
    Economist
    There is growing support for a tax credit for firms that hire more workers: Mr Obama is reportedly interested in the idea and Joe Sestak, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, introduced a bill for one on Friday. However a similar measure in the 1970s had at best a marginal benefit according to Gary Burtless, a scholar at the Brookings Institution.
  • SBA bailouts draw little notice
    November 6, 2009
    Washington Post
    "Logic tells you this is a bad idea. By definition these businesses are already failing, but we are lacking standards right now; our world has been turned upside down," said Barry Bosworth, an economist with the Brookings Institution…Bosworth and other economists said history shows that taking away such programs can be difficult. As evidence, they cite programs that have lingered long past their sunset dates, such as the Agriculture Department's production flexibility contracts (now called direct payments) in the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act…"When the crisis is over, we will have to find a way to clean up this mess," Bosworth said. "But how the hell are we going to turn this back to common sense again?"

Tax and Fiscal Policy

  • Federal Reserve in crosshairs, but many experts say hold fire
    November 12, 2009
    McClatchy Newspapers
    "I am with Dodd on this one," said Alice Rivlin, a former vice chairman of the Fed from 1996 to 1999. "The Fed has not distinguished itself as a regulator." Rivlin said that bank regulation is too fragmented, which creates opportunities for banks to shop for the weakest regulator. "I think Dodd is right to consolidate bank regulation and not put it at the Fed," she said. "The Fed needs to concentrate on its role as central bank."
  • Podcast: Breaking Up (Big Banks) Is Hard To Do
    November 11, 2009
    NPR/Planet Money podcast
    Economist and Planet Money regular Simon Johnson thinks it's time to break up the big banks. Simon says the current regulations aren't enough to prevent another crisis and we need to do something more drastic. Former head of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker and Mervyn King, head of the British central bank, agree, but that hasn't convinced Martin Baily of the Brookings Institution. Baily, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration, is worried about the unintended consequences of bad regulation. He says the risk simply isn't worth it.
  • Fed's role makes its next move key
    November 12, 2009
    Washington Post
    "The current unpopularity of the Fed will make it more difficult for them to raise interest rates when the economy recovers," said Karen Dynan, a former senior Fed economist who now heads the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution. "With the Fed under such close scrutiny, any move to raise interest rates will be challenged even more strongly than in the past."

Health Care

  • Falling Far Short of Reform
    November 10, 2009
    New York Times
    A panel of experts led by Mark McClellan, a doctor and economist who used to run Medicare (and now happens to work at the Brookings Institution), concluded that the Senate Finance bill would help “slow long-term spending growth while building the high-value health care system our nation urgently needs.” That panel also suggested some smart changes to the bill.
  • Why Health Reform will be a Danger to Passive Patients
    November 9, 2009
    U.S. News & World Report
    "The ball is moving, and once you get it going downhill, it can't be stopped," predicts Henry Aaron, a health economist at the Brookings Institution who is confident that the kind of transformation envisioned by the president will happen, even if not before year's end.
  • Healthcare reform: Obama cut private deals with likely foes
    November 6, 2009
    Christian Science Monitor
    "Some people who are hawks for going after these groups may not have liked [deals made with the White House], but the Obama administration rather astutely recognized that they could have a greater chance of moving ahead if they weren’t being advertised against by a great number of groups that take care of people – and that was worth the price to them,” says Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank… Prospects for healthcare legislation turn on whether such groups stay with reform, even if agreements unravel, says Brookings’ Mr. Aaron, a longtime analyst of healthcare politics. “If you move into a psychological mode where people are saying, ‘I really don’t like this,’ but they’re trying to find ways they can live with the bill, rather than saying, ‘If I don’t get this, I’m not on board’ – that’s a big difference with 1994.”
  • The Swine Flu Boogeyman
    November 7, 2009
    Forbes.com
    You see it in such headlines as "CDC Shocker: Swine Flu Killing Young People at Record Rate!" And in lines of panicked parents queued outside vaccine clinics like fans trying to score tickets to a Paul McCartney concert. And in schools closing willy-nilly, which could cost the nation tens of billions, according to a recent Brookings Institute study.

Social Policy

  • Meltdown 101: When unemployment last topped 10 pct
    November 6, 2009
    Associated Press
    College graduates still have much lower jobless rates than those with less education, but they are more likely to be unemployed than in 1982. Job cuts in the financial industry and in high-skilled manufacturing, such as the aerospace industry, have caught up with them, according to Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution. And companies in all sectors are more willing to cut middle managers than in previous recessions, he added, which also affects college graduates.
  • In the name of jobs, ideas that won't work
    November 6, 2009
    Washington Post/Pearlstein Column
    As Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution points out in a new study, the federal government already spends $7 on the elderly for every $1 it spends on children, with intergenerational transfers threatening to gobble up every tax dollar the government collects and ultimately bankrupt the country. At a time when 15 million workers are underemployed, the budget deficit is at record levels, teachers are being laid off, after-school programs are being eliminated and state support of higher education is declining, borrowing $14 billion more to send $250 checks to every senior,