Brookings Today, 9/2/14

A roundup of some of the content published today by Brookings.

• Keeping the South China Sea in perspective. Jeff Bader, Ken Lieberthal, and Michael McDevitt outline steps the U.S. can take to pursue its interests and mitigate disputes in the South China Sea.

• An economist walks into a bar … In this TEDx talk, Robert Litan reviews the contributions economists have made to Internet business models and structures that have contributed to the success of endeavors such as Cupid.com, Priceline, Google ads, Amazon, and sabermetrics in sports..

• 500 day countdown to universal primary education. Julia Gillard notes that there are fewer than 500 days left before the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals set by world leaders in 2000, and more than 60 million children are still out of school. 

• An army to defeat Assad. Kenneth Pollack explains how to turn Syria’s opposition forces into a real fighting force.

• America’s deficit is still a problem. Bill Gale says “it’s too early to claim victory” on the deficit, despite the CBO’s recent debt report.