188 Items

U.S. federal tax return forms printed from the Internal Revenue Service web page.

AP

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

The IRS is Leaving Billions on the Table. Here’s How It Can Collect That Money.

| June 22, 2020

report released last month by the Treasury Department’s inspector general estimated that the amount of lost revenue was nearly $50 billion between 2014 and 2016 alone — an outrage at a time of soaring deficits and growing needs.

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

It Is Hard to Imagine the Field of Political Economy Without Alberto Alesina

| May 24, 2020

My friend Alberto Alesina, the Nathaniel Ropes professor of political economy at Harvard, died of an apparent heart attack while on a walk with his wife, Susan, on Saturday. His loss comes a shock and a tragic blow to all who knew him and to a broad scholarly community. Less than eight hours before his death, he was corresponding with colleagues about ongoing research. It is hard to imagine the field of political economy without him.

Healthcare workers conducts COVID-19 tests at a drive-thru coronavirus testing site, Tuesday, April 21, 2020, in Sanford, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

AP Photo/John Raoux

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

Given What We’re Losing in GDP, We Should Be Spending Far More to Develop Tests

| May 05, 2020

When it comes to crafting foreign policy, designing anti-poverty programs or implementing measures to combat climate change, economists have an understandable tendency to feel as though the economic aspects of the debate receive short shrift. The opposite is true when it comes to the pandemic. If anything, the United States is in danger of overemphasizing the impact of the crisis on the economy — and massively underinvesting in the health measures that are ultimately most important.

World Bank President David Malpass speaks during the opening ceremony of the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings in Washington, Friday, Oct. 18, 2019. 

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

National Governments Have Gone Big. The IMF and World Bank Need to Do the Same.

| Apr. 14, 2020

While social distancing is the West’s route to suppression of the virus, the developing world’s crowded cities and often overcrowded slums make isolation difficult. Advice on hand-washing means little where there is no access to running water. Without a basic social safety net, choices are narrowed and stark: Go to work and risk disease, or stay home and starve with your family.

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands during a joint statement to members of the media Great Hall of the People, Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017, in Beijing, China. Trump is on a five country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Analysis & Opinions - Asia Society

Saving Lives in America, China, and Around the World

The world is now in the midst of a once-in-a-century global health pandemic that threatens the lives and livelihoods of billions. This coronavirus transcends borders and nationalities, and until a vaccine is found, a cluster of cases in any one country will endanger the health and safety of people everywhere. For this reason, there has rarely been a time in which the fates of the world's nations were so clearly linked and where American leadership and purposeful international coordination were so urgently required.

President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Briefing Room, Wednesday, March 25, 2020, in Washington, as Vice President Mike Pence and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin listen. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

Trump is Missing the Big Picture On the Economy

| Mar. 24, 2020

As an economist, I am normally enthusiastic when presidents or other political leaders emphasize the economic aspect of public policy issues. I am all for economic growth, cost benefit analyses, trade agreements, more flexible markets and prudent deregulation. Yet I am appalled by President Trump’s invocation of economic arguments as a basis for overriding the judgments of public health experts about battling the coronavirus pandemic.

Report

Digital Currency Wars: A National Security Crisis Simulation

On November 19, 2019, the Belfer Center’s Economic Diplomacy Initiative hosted a national security crisis simulation in the JFK Jr. Forum to a packed audience from the Harvard and MIT communities. 

Drawing on the experience of Belfer Center members who have served in the highest levels of the U.S. government, the event explored the nexus of U.S. economic power and its national security interests.