New research by Pierre Azoulay, Danielle Li, Bhaven Sampat and me. Earlier this year, the President’s budget proposed a 40% cut to the budget of the NIH. This motivated us to ask: what if the NIH had been 40% smaller?

I had a great time talking with Santi Ruiz @ifp.bsky.social about how to reduce infrastructure costs. Here's the podcast. www.statecraft.pub/p/what-is-am...

Five years after we started it, I'm super happy to share that Works in Progress is now available as a print magazine! 🥹 It'll have everything on web and more. You can subscribe today for $100/£75 to receive 6 beautiful, 120-page issues of our magazine a year. worksinprogress.co/print

Global emissions from heating are about 4x those from cooling. Air conditioning is an important and lifesaving adaptation to climate change. Decarbonize the grid.

Sad news: The dataset behind this famous chart on the decline in costs of genome sequencing has had its NIH funding cut. I loved this chart because it was the first that made me appreciate the impact of dataviz. But it also tracked progress towards an ambitious goal ($1000 genome) that succeeded.

What’s the return on government support for R&D? To try to get a credible answer, Open Philanthropy and the Sloan Foundation are committing up to $1 million to trying something new: we call it a Pop-Up Journal.

New blog post, on 52 pieces of science writing I've learned from over the last two years. Thank you, from one reader, to all the authors! blog.jacobtrefethen.com/science-writ...

LAUNCH DAY 🚀 Today I’m launching a new podcast, Hard Drugs, with Jacob Trefethen (@jacobtref.bsky.social) Our first episode is about lenacapavir — a new HIV drug that blocks infections with an efficacy rate of nearly 100%, and which could completely change the fight against HIV worldwide.

Not sure how many people realize that battery storage already supplies 30% of California’s electricity demand at peak. Batteries aren’t the future — they’re here now.

Wonder what Austin is doing differently than other cities, guess we'll never know

Impressive effort mapping gaps across 100 areas of science and technology to work on. I’m going to make a big pot of coffee and click around:

🚨 We're hiring! Join @ifp.bsky.social’s metascience team to rethink how science gets funded and organized. Fellow & Senior Fellow roles open — $3K referral bonus if we hire your recommendation. Apply by May 11: ifp.org/come-work-wi...

Harrison, whose plasma contained a rare antibody, rolled up his sleeve 1,173 times from 1954 to 2018. The Australian is credited with helping 2.4 million babies and advancing scientific research.

This year's Econ job market has, by all accounts, been brutal. If you're still not sure what you're doing next year, applying for external funding to continue your work is a great way to buy yourself time & options. It's a way to "build your own post-doc." Check out AV's open RFPs!

Sorry, but we now have a once-per-six-months PrEP injection with a 96% efficacy in reducing HIV infections, and the response is to limit PrEP to only pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers? What?! It's going to be much more expensive to provide lifelong treatment than work on prevention.

Some great news: the FDA just approved a new chikungunya vaccine for people aged 12 and older.

NBER Innovation Boot Camp is back this summer for a 4th run (thanks open_phil!)! Lectures by Heidi Williams, Pierre Azoulay, Ina Ganguli, Ben Jones, Chad Jones, Kyle Myers, and me, a great policy panel and keynotes, plus attendance at Summer Institute innovation session. www.nber.org/calls-papers...

Graduate students with interests in innovation, permitting or immigration policy who would like to work on fiscal and economic impacts -- apply now! Applications close on 1/16.

@crampell.bsky.social on Biden's legacy: "Despite the $7.5 billion allocated for EV charging stations, only 44 stations have been built nationwide so far. A $42 billion expansion of broadband internet service still has not connected a single household." www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Mandating all-in upfront pricing is such an obviously good rule

Very glad to see this trend finally reversing

The polio vaccine works.

1/ I wrote for NYT on a 3-prong strategy for climate progress under Trump. -innovation & industrial strategy -pragmatism on fossil fuels -expand interests that benefit from decarb This same approach led to IRA/IIJA. But it did not pass the test for many activist groups.

A pragmatic suggestion from @arnabdatta.bsky.social: "As we look toward an uncertain political future, one lesson is clear: The path to lasting climate progress lies not in oil and gas antagonism, but in transforming our opponents into stakeholders in a clean energy future."

Thinking again about how one of the most influential environmental activist groups in DC opposed the Inflation Reduction Act

Senate Schatz is correct that this is basically the IRA approach but the call is to actually embrace that approach rather than be pulled kicking and screaming to it by Joe Manchin. bsky.app/profile/scha...

The most effective way we can cut emissions over the next four years is to make clean energy cheap. A good call for clean energy abundance in today’s @nytimes.com by @arnabdatta.bsky.social: www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/o...

Climate advocates might feel hopeless with Pres-elect Trump returning to the WH. They shouldn’t. I wrote about how to make progress for NYT 1. Focus on innovation and industrial strategy 2. Be pragmatic about fossil fuels 3. Expand the interests that gain from decarbonization

It’s not cynical. The author is describing a shift in the US elite approach to decarbonization — and as he writes, this approach is epitomized by both the IRA *and* the bipartisan infrastructure law. You can disagree with the ideas but the shift is real, and it’s foolish to pretend it didn’t happen.

Wow

The case for nuclear power, in one chart.

Other blue states should follow Massachusetts’ lead on permitting reform. The only way to achieve ambitious climate goals is to cut red tape and make it easy to build clean energy.

Vaccines are miraculous

Lots of people are about to radically change their view of how the economy is doing

Solve your housing affordability crisis with this one weird trick

Contender for favorite chart of all time: Predictions vs. Reality for solar energy.

We need to make it easier to build transmission lines

"Yes in God's Backyard" is such a fun pro-housing idea

This might be the best explanation I’ve seen for the divergence between consumer sentiment and economic data

One way to solve the “shortage” of environmental review experts: Don’t require >4,000-page environmental reviews for things like congestion pricing.

New research finds the COVID vaccines saved 2.4 million lives

Love when a bill has a name like this rather than some contrived acronym

In a high interest rate, high inflation environment, protectionist measures like the Jones Act hurt even more. Need to repeal these inefficient polices ASAP so we can build.

Good news of the day: Verdict in major class action lawsuit finds that the National Association of Realtors conspired to maintain 6% commissions in violation of US antitrust laws.

But I was told the app was setting all-time records…

Occasional reminder:

I think about this list from Eli Dourado a lot. Progress is a policy choice.

Fixed-price contracts have much better incentives than cost-plus contracts. If Boeing can't make money on fixed-price contracts, then that's a Boeing problem, not a government contracting problem.