Over the past 40 years, children born to parents without college degrees have become less and less likely to grow up with the advantages of a two-parent home. This trend is perpetuating inequality between college-educated and non-college-educated families. To talk about this issue, I’ve invited on Melissa Kearney. Melissa is the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute. Her new book is The Two-Parent Privilege: How the Decline in Marriage Has Increased Inequality and Lowered Social Mobility, and What We Can Do about It ..read more

Over the past 40 years, children born to parents without college degrees have become less and less likely to grow up with the advantages of a two-parent home. This trend is perpetuating inequality between college-educated and non-college-educated families. To talk about this issue, I’ve invited on Melissa Kearney. Melissa is the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute. Her new book is The Two-Parent Privilege: How the Decline in Marriage Has Increased Inequality and Lowered Social Mobility, and What We Can Do about It ..read more

World's Fairs hosted in American cities, like Chicago in 1893 and New York in 1964, are remembered as odes to progress. The United States showcased its prowess on the world's stage and exhibitions awed visitors with the latest technological marvels. But America hasn't hosted a World's Fair in nearly 40 years. In this episode, Charles Pappas explores the impact the fairs once had, how they've changed since the days of sunny optimism, and whether the United States could again host a World's Fair in the near future. Charles is a senior writer at Exhibitor Magazine, where he covers trade show ..read more

When we talk about poverty in the United States, what do we mean? And how do we measure it? My AEI colleague Scott Winship returns to Political Economy to give us a primer on how the "war on poverty" is going. Scott is a senior fellow and Director of Poverty Studies here at AEI. He's also author of the new report, "Bringing Home the Bacon: Have Trends in Men’s Pay Weakened the Traditional Family?" We'll be diving into that question later in the show ..read more

At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, my AEI colleague Stan Veuger told me we needed to support firms until the US economy could rebound. Two and a half years later, how have we fared? Dr. Veuger is back to discuss our fiscal response to the pandemic, the Fed's tricky task of cooling inflation without causing a recession, and more. Stan is a senior fellow in economic policy studies here at the American Enterprise Institute ..read more

Why has the American political scene seemed to be so irrational in the past several years? Economist and author Bryan Caplan says it all comes down to social desirability bias, the observation that people prefer what sounds good to what's true. In this episode, Bryan returns to Political Economy to explain why free markets are so unpopular, what people really mean when they complain about Big Tech and privacy, and much more. Bryan is a best-selling author and Professor of Economics at George Mason University. His latest books are Labor Econ Versus the World and&nb ..read more

Tech optimists promise that true artificial intelligence is just around the corner . . . and have been for half a century. So should we be skeptical of all the excitement surrounding so-called "deep learning" AI — or are we on the cusp of a revolution in artificial intelligence that will penetrate every aspect of modern life? And if the AI revolution really is coming, should we fear mass unemployment or even worse dystopian scenarios from the pages of science fiction? To get a sense of the current landscape of AI research, I'm joined by Melanie Mitchell. Melanie is the Davis Professor at the S ..read more

Moore's law, which states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years, has fueled rapid computing gains since the mid-20th century. But will this law last forever? Today's guest, Neil Thompson, thinks its end is near. I've invited Neil on the podcast to explain why Moore's Law may be coming to an end and what that means for productivity growth and continued innovation. Neil is an innovation scholar in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a research scientist at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and an associate member of the Bro ..read more

When America endeavors to tackle an ambitious project, we speak in terms of moonshots or a "Manhattan Project for X." The assumption is that vast government resources, directed toward some objective, can yield results on the scale of the Moon landing or the atom bomb. But federal research funding is more complicated than throwing dollars at our problems. And with Congress poised to inject American science policy with an adrenaline shot of funding, I've brought Tony Mills back on Political Economy to discuss the bills working their way through the House and Senate. Tony is a ..read more

In the field of economic history, the causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution loom large. Competing theories point to the role of institutions, scientific achievements, and bourgeois ideas. Setting aside the origins of industrialization, another open question concerns the mechanisms by which modern economic growth emerged. To delve into that question, I've brought on W. Walker Hanlon, whose work suggests the engineering profession played a key role. Walker is an associate professor in the department of economics at Northwestern University. Among his thought-provoking works in econ ..read more